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tCfje Hafec Cnslist) Classics 



REVISED EDITION WITH HELPS TO STUDY 



ELI A 



BY 

CHARLES LAMB 



EDITED FOR SCHOOL USE 
BY 

GEORGE W. BENEDICT 

A.SSOCIATE PROFESSOR OF ENGLISH, BROWN ITNIVERSITY 



SCOTT, FORESMAN AND COMPANY 
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Copyright 1911, 1919 
By Scott, Foeesman and Company 



m 1 9 1920 



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a 

^ PREFACE. 

The text of this edition follows that of Mr. E. V. Lucas*s 
admirable edition of The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, 
which reproduces the text of the original collected edition 
of 1823; but I have arranged the essays in the order in which 
they were published in The London Magazine. This is not 
strictly the order of their first appearance, as will be seen from 
the dates given in the Table of Contents, p. 7. For much 
of the information in Parts I. and II. of the Introduction I am 
under obligation not only to Mr. Lucas's edition, but also to 
his Life of Charles Lamb. I have drawn largely from Mr. 
Lucas's notes, which are too valuable not to be used; but 
I have added a good deal that seems to me likely to be of 
service in a school edition. In order that a glance may show 
the frequency and the jcharacter of the literary echoes in 
Lamb's style, references to the sources of many of his quo^ 
tations are printed at the foot of the page ; also his own few 
notes, marked (L). The other notes, of all sorts — on proper 
names, unusual words and phrases, Latin quotations, and 
so forth — are put at the back of the book. My hearty thanks 
are due to my colleague, Mr. W. T. Hastings, for help in 
sifting and arranging them, and for general criticism. 

Much of the matter in the notes could have been spared 
if pupils could only be trusted to clear up difficulties and 
obscurities for themselves by the use of good dictionaries 
and other books of reference. Yet these are not always so 
easily accessible as they should be. Furthermore, I would 
rather give too much than too little, for one misses a great 

5 



6 PREFACE 

part of the flavor unless one realizes Lamb's inveterate allu- 
siveness and understands pretty clearly what the allusions 
signify. It is not necessary, however, that students should 
look up all the quotations whose sources I have noted, nor 
that they should burden their memories with unimportant 
facts about the many places and persons and things that Lamb 
mentions. The notes on such allusions will, I hope, satisfy 
reasonable curiosity and show the picturesqueness of Lamb's 
mental background ; but the notes are not to be learned by 
heart : they are intended as helps to the understanding of the 
text, not as examination-material. 

I beg to suggest, further, that though the bulk of these 
essays is small, it might be well if they were read with school 
classes not in a lump but intermittently, if practicable. 
Lamb's essays are so different from what most pupils have 
read and are reading, that too much of them at one time 
may easily prove closing. And, although Lamb did collect 
his essays, we should remember that they were written to be 
read periodically, and that the intervals in their publication 
served to whet the appetite of the readers of The London 
Magazine and send them to a new paper by Elia with in- 
creased zest. Nor is it necessary, of course, to read the 
whole series, in order to understand Lamb and appreciate 
him. Teachers will doubtless find some of the essays less 
interesting to their pupils than others, and less suitable for 
classroom use. The paper on The Artificial Comedy, for 
instance, though important in itself and also because of 
Macaulay's demurrer to Lamb's views, raises a delicate 
point of criticism on a subject always difficult to manage 
with mixed classes. In short, I should hope that sensible 
teachers might choose the essays and the methods that they 
think will make the reading of Elia most enjoyable. 



TABLE OF CONTENTS 

/ Page 

Preface , . • ^ 

Introduction 

Lamb's Life and Works . . . . . ^ . 9 

Table of Chief Dates 39 

Bibliographical Note . . . . . - 41 

Elia 

The South-Sea House 45 

London Magazine, August, 1820. 
Oxford in the Vacation . . . . . 55 

London Magazine, October, 1820. 
Christ's Hospital Five-and-Thirty Years Ago . . 64 

London Magazine, November, 1820 
The Two Races of Men. ..... 80 

London Magazine, December, 1820. 
New Year's Eve ....... 87 

London Magazine, January, 1821. 
Mrs. Battle's Opinions on Whist . . . 96 

London Magazine, February, 1821. 
Valentine's Day . . . . . • . 104 

Examiner, Feb. 14, 1819; Indicator, Feb 14, 1821. 
A Chapter on Ears 108 

London Magazine, March, 1821. 
All Fools' Day 116 

London Magazine, April, 1821. 
A Quakers' Meeting . . . . . . 121 

London Magazine, April, 1821. 
The Old and the New Schoolmaster . . <, 127 

London Magazine, May, 1821. 
My Relations ... .... 138 

London Magazine, June, 1821. 
Mackery End, in Hertfordshire . . • . 146 

London Magazine, July, 1821. 
Imperfect Sympathies ..... 152 

London Magazine, August, 1821. 



CONTENTS— Continued 

PAGE 

The Old Benchers of the Inner Temple . . . 163 

London Magazine, September, 1821. 
Witches and Other Night-Fears . . . 177 

London Magazine, October, 1821, 
Grace Before Meat . . . . . . . 185 

London Magazine, November, 1821. 
My First Play 194 

London Magazine, December, 1821. 
Dream-Children: A Reverie . . . . . 199 

London Magazine, January, 1822., 
On Some of the Old Actors . . . 204 

London Magazine, February, 1822 
Distant Correspondents . . . . . • , 219 

London Magazine, March, 1822 
On the Artificial Comedy of the Last Century 226 

London Magazine, April, 1822. 
The Praise of Chimney-Sweepers .... 241 

London Magazine, May, 1822. 
A Complaint of the Decay of Beggars in the Metropolis 250 

London Magazine, June, 1822. 
A Dissertation upon Roast Pig . . . . 261 

London Magazine, September, 1822, 
A Bachelor's Complaint 270 

Reflector, 1812; London Magazine, September, 1822, 
On the Acting of Munden 279 

Examiner, 1819; London Magazine, October, 1822. 
Modern Gallantry ,.,... 281 

London Magazine, November, 1822. 
Notes .,.,..... 287 
Appendix 

Helps to Study . 343 

Theme Subjects ........ 347 

Selections for Class Reading . . . , , 348 



LAMB'S LIFE AND WORKS. 
L 

Charles Lamb was born February 10, 1775, in London, 
in the Inner Temple, a famous old nest of lawyers' lodg- 
ings and offices. His father, John Lamb, was clerk, 
body-servant, and factotuni to Samuel Salt, one of the ''old 
benchers"; and his mother was Salt's housekeeper. Charles 
was the youngest of seven /d^ildren. Of these only a brother, 
John, arid a sister, Mary Anne, respectively about twelve and 
ten years older than Charles, lived to adult age : they are the 
James and Bridget Elia of the essay My Relations. Lamb 
described his father in the essay on The Old Benchers of the 
Inner Temple, under the name of Lovel, in such vivid terms 
that it is easy to see that his owm lovable nature was a patri- 
mony. It was nearly all that he inherited : his father's station 
in life was a humble one. 

Charles had his first lessons from the daughter of a former 
resident in the Temple ; and in her declining years he gave 
her in return a generous pension. At about the age of six 
he went 'tor a year to a day-school in Fetter Lane, near by. 
He was a delicate boy, and had had smallpox at five years 
old; and he stuttered. 

Fortunately, through the interest of Salt, Lamb was ad- 
mitted to Christ's Hospital — the fam.ous Blue Coat School, — 
and with some unusual privileges, if we may trust the essay 
on Christ's Hospital in Elia. An earlier essay. Recollections 
of Christ's Hospital, gives an affectionate and enthusiastic 
account of the character of the school and of the Blue Coat 

9 



10 INTRODUCTION 

boys. Here he remained from his entrance in 1782 until 1789, 
during which time Coleridge, the poet, and Middleton, the 
first bishop of Calcutta were among his schoolfellows and 
intiikiates. A bronze statuette group of the three is now a 
trophy of the school, "held in rotation by the ward in which 
most prizes have been gained in the year." ^^^ There is 
also a school medal bearing a likeness of Lamb, given as an 
English Essay Prize. ^^^ 

A schoolmate ^^^ writes of him thus: "His step was planti- 
grade, which made his walk slow and peculiar, adding to 
the staid appearance of his figure. I never heard his name 
mentioned without the addition of Charles, although, as there 
was no other boy of the name of Lamb, the addition was un- 
necessary; but there was an implied kindness in it. . . . 
His delicate frame and his difficulty of utterance, which was 
increased by agitation, unfitted him for joining in any boister- 
ous sport." He was not one of the Grecians, or high-scholar- 
ship boys being prepared for the University; but his school 
years gave a scholarly turn to a love of reading that was born 
in him and had doubtless been fed upon the books in Samuel 
Salt's library — that "spacious closet of good old English 
reading" which he speaks of in Mackery End. Wordsworth 
tells us^^^ that "Lamb was a good Latin scholar, and prob- 
ably would have gone to college upon one of the school 
foundations but for the impediment in his speech." He 
was, however, a "Deputy Grecian," i. e., a member of the 
next to the highest class. 

Soon after leaving the school, at the age of fourteen, he 
seems to have been taken into the office of Joseph Paice (de- 



(1) See the cut in Lucas's edition, Vol. II., p. 320. 

(2) lb. p. 324. 

(3) Valentine Le Grice, quoted in Luf^as's Life, Vol. I., p. 84. 

(4) Note to tne poem Written After the Death of Charles Lamb. 



THE ESSAYS OF ELIA 11 

scribed in Modern Gallaniry), where he probably learned 
bookkeeping. Through this friend's influence he soon got 
work in the Examiner's office of the South Sea Company, 
in whose employ his brother John was, at half a guinea per 
w^eek. In the spring of 1792, again by the influence of 
Paice, he was given a post in the East India House as a 
bookkeeper in the Accountant-General's department ; and 
here he stayed for thirty-three years, until he was pen- 
sioned by the Company and retired. 

DeQuincey ^^^ has given us a vivid picture of Lamb at his 
work, which has so much of character in it that it deserves to 
be quoted at length: 

'Tt was either late in 1804 or early in 1805 that I had ob- 
tained from a literary friend a letter of introduction to Mr. 
Lamb. . . . Let me describe my brief introductory call 
upon him at the India House. ... I was show^n into 
a small room, or else a small section of a large one . . . 
in which was a very lofty writing-desk, separated by a still 
higher railing from that part of the floor in which the pro- 
fane — the laity, like myself — were allowed to approach the 
clerus, or clerkly rulers of the room. Within the railing sat, 
to the best of my remembrance, six quill-driving gentlemen ^^^ 
„ . . [who] were all too profoundly immersed in their 
oriental studies to have any sense of my presence. . . . 
I walked, therefore, into one of the two open doorways of 
the railing, and stood close by the high stool of him w4io 
occupied the first place wdthin the little aisle. I touched 
his arm, by way of recalling him from his lofty Leaden- 
hall speculations to this sublunary world ; and, presenting my 
letter, asked if that gentleman (pointing to the address) 

(1) Works, Masson's edition, Vol. III., p. 38flf: Recollections of Charles 
Lamb. 

(2) Lamb's friend, Henry Crabb Robinson, has recorded in his Diary one 
of Lamb's puns at the expense of his feiiow-suiferers: "The large room 
at the accountant's office at the East India House is divided into boxes or 
compartments, in each of which sit six clerks, Charles Lamb himself in one. 
They are called Compounds. The meaning of the word was asked one day, 
and Lamb said it was 'a collection of simples.' " 



12 INTRODUCTION 

were really a citizen of the present room; for I had been 
repeatedly misled, by the directions given me, into wrong 
rooms. The gentleman smiled; it was a smile not to 
be forgotten. This was Lamb. . . . The seat upon 
which he sat was a very high one; so absurdly high, by the 
way, that I can imagine no possible use or sense in such an 
altitude unless it were to restrain the occupant from playing 
truant at the fire by opposing Alpine difficulties to his 
descent. . . . 

"He began to dismount instantly; and, as it happened that 
the very first round of his descent obliged him to turn his back 
upon me as if for a sudden purpose of flight, he had an excuse 
for laughing; which he did heartily — saying at the same time 
something to this effect: that I must not judge from first ap- 
pearances; that he should revolve upon me; that he w^as not 
going to fly; and other facetiae, which challenged a general 
laugh from the clerical brotherhood. . . . 

*'The letter of introduction, containing (I imagine) no 
matters of business, was speedily run through; and I instantly 
received an invitation to spend the evening with him. . . . 
He was, with his limited income — and I say it deliberately — 
positively the most hospitable man I have known in this 
world." 

Lamb received no salary at the India House until after 
three years of probation. In 1795 his pay began at £40 a 
year, increasing gradually, but somewhat irregularly, to £730 
in 1825. In addition to his salary there were certain regular 
gratuities and some payments for work over time. The 
hours were not what we should call severe — from ten in the 
morning until four in the afternoon ; and (if not at first, cer- 
tainly later) he had a vacation of a month in each year, besides 
certain regular holidays. 

But the drudgery of auditing accounts, calculating interest, 
making out warrants, and recording entries of sales and the 
like, galled him extremely as time went on. His dislike of 
the work finds its way often into his letters. In 1815 he writes 



THE ESSAYS OF ELIA 13 

to Wordsworth: "My business and office business in genera) 
has increased so. I don't mean I am there every night, but 
I must expect a great deal of it. . . . Do not keep a hoh- 
day now once in ten times, where I used to keep all red-letter 
days, and some fine days besides, which I used to dub nature's 
holidays. I have had my day ... of the little that is 
left of my life I may reckon two-thirds as dead, for Time that 
a man may call his own is his Life." Later in the same year, 
to Wordsworth again : *T have a glimmering aspect, a chink- 
light of liberty before me. . . . If I can but begin my 
own day at 4 o'clock in the afternoon, I shall think myself to 
have Eden days of peace and liberty to what I have had.'* 
His letter to Wordsworth upon his release in 1825 is well 
known: "I came home forever on Tuesday in last week. 
The incomprehensibleness of my condition overwhelm'd 
me. It was like passing from life into Eternity. Every year 
to be as long as three, i. e., to have three times as much time 
that is my own, in it! . . . Freedom and life co- 
existent." 

The cloud that business threw over him must have been the 
darker because of a streak of morbid melancholy, a tendency 
to insanity, inherent in the blood. In his twenty-first year he 
had a brief attack of melancholia, of which he writes with a 
brave show of humor to Coleridge : *T know not what suffer- 
ing scenes you have gone through at Bristol — my life has been 
somewhat diversified of late. The six weeks that finished 
last year and began this year your very humble servant spent 
very agreeably in a madhouse at Hoxton — I am got somewhat 
rational now, and don't bite anyone. But mad I was. " . . . 
It may convince you of my regard for you when I tell you 
my head ran on you in my madness, as much almost as on 
another person, who I am. inclined to think was the more im- 



14 INTRODUCTION 



mediate cause of my temporary frenzy." This last allusion 
must be to Ann Simmons, of whom later. 

Yet it was not his own but his sister's insanity that threw 
the deepest shadow upon his life. Mary had given signs of the 
malady before September, 1796. In that month, after symp- 
toms that alarmed her brother and sent him — most unfor- 
tunately in vain — after their physician, she fell into a violent 
paroxysm such as sometimes accompanies the depression of 
melancholia. Snatching a knife from the table in their rooms 
in the Temple, she tried to kill her little dressmaker apprentice, 
actually wounded her aged father, and stabbed her mother 
to death. Charles was permitted to take her to a private 
asylum instead of having to put her in a public hospital for 
the insane. The next year *'her removal was then allowed 
by the authorities on [Lamb's] giving 'his solemn engagement 
that he would take her under his care for life.' Charles 
Lamb when he made this promise was just twenty-two." ^^^ 
Thenceforth she was the object of his constant care and 
solicitude; and though for considerable intervals she was. 
herself, hardly a year passed without a m,ore or less severe 
recurrence of her malady. Until her father's death in 1799, it 
was deemed unwise for her to live at home, and during her 
attacks after that she was usually in a private asylum. 

Never were brother and sister closer in all their sympathies, 
desires, and interests. Mary understood her brother, stimu- 
lated his endeavors, shared his disappointments and suc- 
cesses perfectly. Only their drudgeries were separate — 
Charles bending over his ledgers at the India House, Mary 
plying her needle as a professional ''mantua-maker" at home. 
Their hours of freedom they lived together. Lamb's letters 
are full of his sister. During one of her attacks he wrote 

(1) Lucas, Life, Vol. I., p. 131. 



THE ESSAYS OF ELIA 15 

to Dorothy Wordsworth (the poet's sister) thus: "Meantime 
she is dead to me and I miss a prop. All my strength is 
gone, arid I am like a fool, bereft of her cooperation. I dare 
not think, lest I should think wrong; so used am I to look up 
to her in the least and the biggest perplexity." Indeed, it is 
pleasant to think that the intimacy between the Words- 
worths and the Lambs was the readier and closer because 
of the perfect sympathy between brother and sister on 
either side. 

Except for the tragedy of 1796 and Charles's retirement 
from the India House in 1825 there is little to mark stages 
in his life. His literary labors, at first somewhat varied, 
were after 1810 pretty much of one sort. For the rest. 
Lamb's life was diversified only by his vacation excursions 
(with Mary, when she was able) and his frequent shifts of 
domicile. He visited Somersetshire and the Lake Country, 
the Isle of Wight, Oxford and Cambridge, Mackery End and 
Blakesware in Hertfordshire, "sweet Calne in Wiltshire," 
Birmingham, and Paris, and has left us charming reminis- 
cences of some of them in his essays. 

But he was of the city by his nature as well as by the com- 
pulsion of his employment, and it was only in London that 
he felt himself thoroughly comfortable. His home, until 
Samuel Salt's death, in 1792, was in the Temple; after eight 
years in small lodgings in Holborn and Pentonville, he and 
Mary came back to lodgings in the Temple again, in Mitre 
Court Buildings. Here began the famous weekly gatherings 
of his friends, ^^^ with whist, puns, punch, talk of plays and 
pictures and books. The Lambs moved in 1809 to Inner 
Temple Lane, "where," wrote Charles, "I mean to live and 

(1) Among the records of these gatherings is Hazlitt's spirited account 
In his Conversation of Authors. 



16 INTRODUCTION 

die: for I have such a horror of moving" — this was the 
seventh move already — **that I would not take a benefice 
from the King if I were not indulged with non-residences." 
But they moved out of the Temple in 1817 to lodgings in 
Russell Street, Covent Garden. Lamb wrote to Dorothy 
Wordsworth: *'I thought we never could have been torn up 
from the Temple. . . . We can never strike root so deep 
in any other ground." 

In 1823 they took a house, the first they had ever had to 
themselves, by the bank of the New River in the suburb of 
Islington; in 1827 another at Enfield, further out from the 
city, where with some interruptions they stayed till 1833. 
From *'dull Enfield," as he calls it. Lamb wrote a long letter 
to Wordsworth — of all people I — protesting against the bore- 
dom of life in the country. ''Yearnings of life, not quite 
kill'd, rise, prompting me that there was a London, and that I 
was of that old Jerusalem. In dreams I am in Fleetmarket, 
but I wake and try to sleep again. . . . O, let no native 
Londoner imagine that health, and rest, and innocent occupa- 
tion, interchange of converse sweet and recreative study, can 
make the country anything better than altogether odious and 
detestable. A garden was the primitive prison till man with 
promethean felicity and boldness luckily sinned himself out 
of it. Thence followed Babylon, Nineveh, Venice, London, 
haberdashers, goldsmiths, taverns, playhouses, satires, epi- 
grams, puns — these all came in on the town part, and the 
thither side of innocence. Man found out inventions. From 
my den I return you condolence for your decaying sight, not 
for anything there is to see in the country, but for the miss of 
the pleasure of reading a London newspaper. ... I 
would live in London shirtless, bookless." From Enfield 
they moved to Edmonton, "three or four miles nearer the Great 



THE ESSAYS OF ELIA 17 

City," as Lamb writes, again to Wordsworth: **...! 
have few friends left there, one or two tho' most beloved. But 
London streets and faces cheer me inexpressibly." 

Lamb had absolutely a genius for friendship, and hardly 
anything in his life is more significant than the number and 
quality of his friends and acquaintances. Some came to him 
from his early acquired and long continued interest in the 
theatre: of these the closest was the charming and accom- 
plished actress, Miss Fanny Kelly, to whom, by the way, 
Mary Lamb taught Latin. Others were Liston, Charles 
Kemble, Macready, Elliston, and Munden, the actors; and 
Holcroft, James Kenney, and James Sheridan Knowles, the 
playwrights. Most of his distinguished friends, however, were 
men of letters more or less closely connected with the Ro- 
mantic Movement in literature, in which Lamb himself played 
a part. The chief of these have already been mentioned — 
Samuel Taylor Coleridge and William Wordsworth. Some of 
the others were Robert Southey, the poet-laureate ; Thomas 
DeQuincey, the "English opium-eater"; William Hazlitt, the 
critic and essayist; Leigh Hunt, the editor, essayist, and 
poet ; Henry Cary, the translator of Dante ; Walter Savage 
Landor, the poet and essayist; WiUiam Godwin, the political 
philosopher; Thomas Hood, the humorist; and Henry Crabb 
Robinson, the author of the famous Diary which gives 
us so much of the literary gossip of the day. Among his 
acquaintances were John Keats, Thomas Moore, Sir Walter 
Scott, Samuel Rogers, Thomas Love Peacock, Mrs. Shelley, 
Stothard the artist, John Payne Collier the Shakespearean 
scholar, Thomas Carlyle (who has left us an ill-natured and 
ill-judged estimate of Lamb), and Christopher North 
(Professor Wilson). From some of his friends there were 
tem.porary estrangements, but there is universal testimony 




18 INTRODUCTION 

to the kindliness, sincerity, warmth, and lovableness of 
his nature. 

He had one love affair, in his youth, and once later con- 
templated marriage. Upon some visit to his grandmother 
Field in Hertfordshire, he doubtless met Ann Simmons, who 
is identified with the "Alice W — " of the essays and who is 
apparently the subject of some early love sonnets. His 
heart must have been "seriously engaged,'' in the old- 
fashioned phrase, but nothing came of it. His grandmother, 
it is said, opposed the match because of the insanity in his 
family. If he had not ceased to think seriously of Ann Sim- 
mons by the time of his mother's death, he certainly did then. 
Writing to Coleridge, he says: "Mention nothing of poetry. 
I have destroyed every vestige of past vanities of that kind." 
Two months later he writes to Coleridge again: "I have 
burned all my own verses. ... I burned a little journal 
of my foolish passion which I had a long time kept"; and 
about a year later still, "it is a passion of which I retain 
nothing, 'twas a weakness." The stern seriousness of his 
responsibility toward his sister would seem to have killed, 
for the time, all thoughts of authorship as well as of marriage. 
In 1819, when he was forty-four, he proposed marriage 
to Miss Kelly, the actress. His letter, written w^hen Miss 
Kelly wfis suffering from some grief, begins thus: "Dear 
Miss Kelly — We had the pleasure, fain I might better call 
it, of seeing you last night in the new Play. It was a most 
consummate piece of acting, but what a task for you to under- 
go ! at a time when your heart is sore from real sorrow ! it has 
given rise to a train of thinking which I cannot suppress." 
The whole letter is tender, considerate, manly; but one cannot 
wonder that Miss Kelly declined the offer. From the fre- 
quent occurrence in it of "we", "us", "our", it is clear that 



THE ESSAYS OF ELIA ' 19 

even at such a moment Miss Kelly's image shared with his 
sister Mary's the possession of his thoughts : one might almost 
say he was proposing marriage on Mary's behalf as well as 
his own. Only a year and a half later Lamb wrote Dream 
Children, which Mr. Lucas suggests should be read in the 
light of his recent proposal,. Lamb's thoughts of marriage, 
though prompted more by a generous and tender regard for 
Miss Kelly's comfort than by real love, perhaps had stirred 
his memory and rekindled a gleam of his early passion. 
Having no child of his own. Lamb found one in Emma 
Isola, the motherless daughter of a shy, unworldly don of 
Cambridge University. Charles and Mary had seen her in 
Cambridge in 1820, and she had visited them the following 
Christmas. Perhaps they already thought of having her 
live with them, and may have made their journey to France 
in 1821 to the end of helping her with French. On her 
father's death in 1823 they adopted her. They taught her 
Latin, and Robinson tells us that Lamb taught her Italian 
"without knowing the language himself." She became a 
governess in a friend's family, and in 1833 married Edward 
Moxon, the publisher. 

Though cordially approving the marriage. Lamb missed 
his niece, as he called her. Mary Lamb's illness had 
grown much upon her, and bore hard upon her brother. 
Coleridge, his friend of forty years, died in July, 1834, and 
Lamb felt his loss greatly. He had no routine of employ- 
ment to uphold him. His health was enfeebled — it must be 
confessed, by his intemperance. December 22, 1834, during 
a morning's walk in Edmonton, he stumbled and fell. The 
illness which followed was fatal. He died December 27, 
and was buried in Edmonton. Thirteen years later Mary 
Lamb died in London, and was buried beside her brother. 



II. 

Charles Lamb belongs to the class of miscellaneous writers. 
The range of kinds in his writing is large, but as his product 
in these various kinds is by no means of uniform merit, he 
lives by a rather small part of his whole work, — by the Tales 
from Shakespear, the Specimens of English Dramatic Poets, 
and a few essays, chiefly those collected under the titles 
Elia and Last Essays of Elia. 

His first serious efforts were in poetry, consisting of a few 
sonnets, some blank verse fragments, and a handful of other 
bits, composed between 1794 and 1798. Some are senti- 
mental, some sad, some religious, showing the grave 'view of 
the world engendered in him by the failure of his first hopes 
in love and by his sister's insanity. Four of the sl nnets were 
published with Coleridge's Poems on Various Subjects (1796) 
and republished, with additions, in the second edition (1797), 
which contained also contributions from Coleridge's other 
literary protege, Charles Lloyd. In 1798 Lloyd and Lamb 
published a volume of poems under the unassuming title 
Blank Verse, in which seven short pieces were Lamb's. 
Lamb printed a few other poems in periodicals during these 
years, among them Living Without God in the World, which 
is on the whole the best thing in his' early verse. There can 
be little doubt that all these early poems were written under 
the influence of the new ideas about poetry which Coleridge 
thought he had received from reading Bowles's sonnets, and 
which he of course preached to his friends, Lloyd and Lamb, 

20 



THE ESSAYS OF ELIA 21 

as well as to Wordsworth. ^^^ Lamb's verses are simple, 
sweet, and tender, but his poetic style lacks, for the most 
part, melody and power, and it is safe to say that were it 
not for the interest in his other work and in Coleridge's ger- 
minative influence, his poetry would be forgotten now. 

Much the same may be said of his next work, Rosamund 
Gray (1798), a curiously condensed story in thirteen chapters 
averaging a little over two pages in length. By its manner, 
particularly at the outset, one might think it intended for 
children, but its pathos is evidently aimed at adult readers. 
It is not at all a story of what happens — the interest is wholly 
in the emotions which the events awaken in the actors and in 
the author; that is, it is of the sentimental class. Some 
critics, however, find its sentiment so simple and pure that it 
makes a deep impression upon them. 

Lamb's next venture was more ambitious. It was a 
tragedy, John Woodvil (completed 1799), in mixed prose 
and irregular blank verse, full of echoes of Elizabethan 
dramatists. It is, in fact, an attempt to write a play in the 
Elizabethan style, an attempt for wiiich Lamb's intimate 
knowledge of the old drama and his sensitiveness to effects 
of style qualified him probably better than any other man of 
his day. But as a play it can hardly be called successful. 
The feelings of love, filial piety, loyalty, and ambition are its 
springs of action, its temper is noble, the conception is in- 
tense; -yet the plot is bare, the characters are not real, and 

( 1) Bowles was doubtless only the spark to the powder. In brief, Cole- 
ridge's poetical creed involved the superiority of the sonnet and blank verse 
and free lyric measures over the conventional ten-syllable couplet of the 
school of Pope; the love of natural beauty; and the reliance on imagination 
and emotion rather than on reason and polished technique, for the produc- 
tion of poetical pleasure. The idea that true poetry should be the out- 
pouring of the heart Coleridge emphasized by calling thirty-six of the 
pieces in his first volume of poems by the affected and clumsy title of 
"Effusions." Lamb remonstrated, and begged him to call them "Sonnets, 
for heaven's sake, not 'Effusions.' " 



22 ' INTRODUCTION 



"^ 



the poetry, except for a few short passages, is not truly affect- 
ing. It was submitted, under its original title of Pride's Cure, 
to Kemble, the great actor, who declined it, and it was never 
produced on the stage in Lamb's lifetime. Lamb published 
it in 1802, together with some Curious Fragments capitally 
imitating Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy, of which he was 
very fond. The book was not well received. 

In 1800 Lamb wrote the epilogue for Godwin's unsuccessful 
tragedy, Antonio. In his second paper on the Old Actors 
{London Magazine, April, 1822), he gives a m.ost amusing 
account of the one, damning performance of this play.^^^ For 
the next two years his published work was small and unim- 
portant, consisting of lampoons on the government in The 
Albion (a short-lived affair), squibs and jokes in The Morning 
Chronicle and The Morning Post, some dramatic criticism, 
and one piece, The Londoner, that shows for the first time in 
print his love of the city, and gives promise of the later Elia. 

Another attempt in drama, the farce Mr. H — , was pro- 
duced at Drury Lane Theatre in 1806. It was a failure, and 
was withdrawn at Lamb's request. The plot turns upon 
the grotesqueness of the name Hogsflesh, which its owner 
attempts to conceal, but inadvertently reveals, to the dis- 
gust and consternation of his friends, particularly his lady- 
love. He gets it changed to Bacon, and thus comes off 
triumphant. The play was produced with some success 
in Philadelphia in 1812, and printed there, without Lamb's 
name, in 1813. Lamb published it for the first time author- 
itatively in Vol. II. of his collected Works (1818). 

The next year (1807) saw the publication of the earliest of 
-Lamb's lasting works. This was the Tales from Shakespear, 

(1) This passage was omitted when Lamb revised the essay for the col- 
lected edition of Elia. 



THE ESSAYS OF ELIA 23 

long a deservedly popular book with the young readers for 
wliom it was intended. It was put forth by **The Juvenile 
Library," i. e., Mrs. William Godwin, whom Lamb cordially 
detested but whose enterprise every child that has made ac- 
quaintance with Shakespeare through the Tales has reason to 
be grateful for. Though it bore the name of Charles Lamb 
alone as author, it was more Mary Lamb's work than her 
brother's, for out of the twenty tales in the book, she wrote all 
but those of Lear, Macbeth, Timon, Romeo, Hamlet, and 
Othello. The preface explained that the writers had kept as 
much of Shakespeare's language as was practicable, and that 
"what these tales shall have been to the young readers, that 
and much more it is the writers' wish that the true Plays of 
Shakespear may prove to them in older years — enrichers of 
fancy, strengtheners of virtue, a withdrawing from all selfish 
and mercenary thoughts, a lesson of all sweet and honorable 
thoughts and actions, to teach courtesy, benignity, generosity, 
humanity; for of examples teaching these virtues his pages 
are full." 

The connection thus formed with The Juvenile Library 
lasted for some years and produced several other books for 
children. In The Adventures of Ulysses (1808) Lamb retold 
in charming style — better even than that of the Tales— i\iQ 
story of the Odyssey, taking it from Chapman's Homer. 
Mrs. Leicester's School (1808; the first edition, however, bears 
the date 1809), is a collection of stories supposed to be told 
in turn by ten young ladies of a boarding-school concerning 
their childhood experiences. It came out anonymously, but 
was chiefly Mary Lamb's work. The stories vary consider- 
ably in interest, but all are better executed than Rosamund 
Gray; and they have an added interest from the many auto- 
biographical hints they contain. In 1809 appeared Poetry 




24 INTRODUCTION 

for Children, by the Author of "Mrs. Leicester's School." 
This also was chiefly by Mary Lamb. The last book issued 
by The Juvenile Library in which the Lambs were concerned 
seems to have been Charles's Prince Dorus (1811), a humorous 
verse-tale of the prince with the long nose.^^^ 

Lamb now turned his attention to the old drama w^ith a 
more serious critical purpose. He had been at work for 
some time upon a collection of extracts, and published it in 
1808 under the title Specimens of English Dramatic Poets Who 
Lived about the Time of Shakspeare: With Notes by Charles 
Lamb. It was published by Longman, apparently as a sort 
of companion to Ellis's Specimens of the Early English Poets 
(1790), Ellis's Specimens of English Metrical Romances 
(1805), and Burnett's Specimens of English Prose Writers 
(1807). The importance of the undertaking itself and its 
significant position in the history of the appreciation of the 
Elizabethan drama justify the following quotation from 
Lamb's Preface: 

"The kind of extracts which I have sought after haA^e been, 
not so much passages of wit and humour, though the old 
plays are rich in such, as scenes of passion, sometimes of 
the deepest quality, interesting situations, serious descrip- 
tions, that which is more nearly allied to poetry than to wit, 
and to tragic rather than to comic poetry. The plays 
which I have made choice of have been, with few excep- 
tions, those which treat of human life and manners, rather 
than masques, and arcadian pastorals. . . . My leading 
design has been, to illustrate what may be called the moral 
sense of our ancestors, to show in what manner they felt, 
when they placed themselves by the power of imagination in 
trying situations in the conflicts of duty and passion, or the 

(1) The verses in The King and Queen of Hearts (undated) are ascribed 
to Lamb with all but entire certainty. This was an apparently early 
publication of The Juvenile Library, consisting of amusing copper-plate 
pictures after the manner of playing-cards, with a running verse com- 
mentary. 



THE ESSAYS OF ELIA 25 

strife of contending duties; what sort of loves and enmities 
theirs were; how their griefs were tempered, and their fuU- 
swoln joys abated; how much of Shakespeare shines in the 
great men his contemporaries, and how far in his divine mind 
and manners he surpassed them and all mankind. 

"Another object which I had in making these selections 
was, to bring together the most admired scenes in Fletcher 
and Massinger, in the estimation of the world the only dramatic 
poets of that age who are entitled to be considered after Shake- 
speare, and to exhibit them in the same volume with the more 
impressive scenes of old Marlowe, Heywood, Tourneur, Web- 
ster, Ford, and others ; to show what we have slighted, while 
beyond all proportions we have cried up one or two favorite 
names." 

It will be seen from these words that Lamb's purpose 
was not scientific or historical, but literary, in a somewhat 
narrow sense. He was not studying dramatic technique or 
the development of the drama as a type ; he was culling and 
arranging and exhibiting those things that a reader of taste 
should be expected to enjoy. His interest is in emotions and 
in the imaginative realization and expression of those emo- 
tions. Ideas there are, of course, in the dramatists: but 
Lamb is always less concerned to formulate and expound 
ideas than to capture the feelings that spring from ideas and 
situations, and to observe how" those feelings find expression 
in a particular man's actions and words. The testimony 
to the acuteness of his insight and the fineness of his taste is 
universal. Professor Herford's comment is excellent^^^ : for 
this task, he says, "no living Englishman had comparable 
qualifications ... he had to choose out the decisive 
poetry from several hundred plays of some thirty authors. 
Even Scott is not more one in spirit with his ballads than 

(1) The Age of Wordsworth, pp. 62-63, 



26 INTRODUCTION 

Lamb is with his plays. His brief critical notes are 

the inmost breath and genius of the poetry itself captured and 
made palpable in words." 

The Specimens may well be considered the prelude, as it 
were, to the second period of Lamb's literary labors. In his 
first period he seems to be trying his powers, but in his second 
he finds his feet as an essayist and proceeds master of criticism. 
The opportunity for this more serious achievement came to 
him, as it happened, through Leigh Hunt, himself a Christ's 
Hospital boy. Hunt and his brother, who had started a 
weekly paper called The Examiner in 1808, undertook also 
a quarterly, The Reflector, in 1810, which was to be largely 
the work of old Blue Coat boys. To it Lamb contributed 
some of his keenest and best sustained critical essays, espe- 
cially the papers on The Genius and Character of Hogarth, 
and On the Tragedies of Shakespeare Considered with Ref- 
erence to their Fitness for Stage Representation. Some 
of his other Reflector contributions, such as On the In- 
convenience of Being Hanged, Edax on Appetite, and The 
Good Clerk, show the characteristic vein of humor of the Elia 
essays. In The Examiner, in 1812, he published some squibs 
in verse against the Prince Regent, the most amusing and 
caustic of which is The Prince of Whales. In 1813 he began 
to write characteristic short scraps of articles for the "Table 
Talk" in The Examiner; he contributed also dramatic 
criticisms and some short reviews of books, among them one 
on a burlesque entitled Falstaff's Letters (in which he himself 
certainly had had a hand), and an appreciative one on 
Keats's poems. To this period belongs some good work in 
other periodicals, especially Recollections of Christ's Hospital, 
in The Englishman's Magazine, 1813, and a review of 



THE ESSAYS OF ELIA 27 

Wordsworth's Excursion in The Quarterly Review, ^^^ 
1814. His last piece in The Examiner seems to have been 
in 1820, in which year he wrote also a few things for Hunt's 
Indicator. 

But before he ceased to write for Hunt's papers, he had 
made a collection of such early work as he wished to preserve, 
and, adding to it from his more recent writing, pubHshed the 
whole in two volumes in 1818 under the title The Works of 
Charles Lamb. The first volume contained reprinted poems, 
John Woodvil, the dramatic fragment The Witch, the Curious 
Fragments, Rosamund Gray, and Recollections of Christ's 
Hospital. The second was made up of critical and other 
essays and Mr. H — . 

To the opportunity offered him by Hunt's columns and 
to the consequent feeling of freedom and encouragement, he 
owed much, as has been said. A still more favorable op- 
portunity opened in 1820, the year which marks the begin- 
ning of his best and most productive period. This chance 
was the foundation of The London Magazine — a new venture, 
with an old name — by John Scott, who had edited The 
Champion, for which Lamb had written in 1814. Very 
likely Scott invited him to write for the London; but one of 
his biographers ^^^ says that "Lamb's association with HazHtt 
in the year 1820 introduced him to that of The London 
Magazine, which supplied the finest stimulus his intellect 

(1) Lamb'srelations with the Quarterly, edited by the high-handed Giflford, 
were always uncomfortable. Gifford had called Lamb's comment on 
Ford, in the Dramatic Specimens, "the blasphemies of a maniac," a judg- 
ment, which, as Robinson says in his Diary, "in brutality surpasses any- 
thing, even in the Edinburgh Review." The Quarterly garbled Lamb's review 
of the Excursion, which he said to Wordsworth was ' the prettiest piece of 
prose I ever writ" ; it printed Southey's article on "The Progress of In- 
fidelity" that called out Lamb's defence of Hazlitt, Hunt, and himself; and 
it professed to think Lamb's Confessions of a Drunicard an autobiographical 
document. 

(2) T. N. Talfourd, Final Memorials of Charles Lamb, Chap. VII. 



28 INTRODUCTION 

had ever received, and induced the compositions fondly 
and familiarly known under the fantastic title of Elia." 

This pseudonym was the real name of an old Italian 
clerk in the South Sea House in Lamb's day there i^^^ *'Elia 
himself added the function of an author to that of a 
scrivener like myself," writes Lamb. He tells us that the 
proper pronunciation is "ElHa," but it must have been 
variously pronounced in his own day. Mr. Lucas says that 
Lamb's friend Hone rhymed it with "desire" — I suppose 
because of the similarity to "Elias"; and, oddly, the Maclise 
portrait of Lamb bears the name in Greek letters in two 
forms, viz : EAI A and rjXia, which by the practice of that time 
would indicate respectively '*Ellia" and "Eelia." This last is 
certainly the common pronunciation now; but it must be 
given up. 

Under cover of this pseudonym Lamb published almost all 
of his contributions to The London Magazine. His first was 
in August, 1820. Scott, the first editor, died from a wound 
received in a duel, in February, 1821, and the control passed 
into the hands of John Taylor, of the publishing firm of Taylor 
and Hessey, which bought the magazine after Scott's death; 
Lamb, however,' continued to write for it — occasionally, it 
would seem, anonymously. His last contribution, according 
to Mr. Lucas, was in August, 1825, with w^hich number 
Taylor and Hessey also ended their connection with the 
magazine. After that Lamb used the signature "Elia" for 
a few pieces in other periodicals {The New Monthly Magazine, 
The Englishman's Magazine, Hone's Table Book, and The 
AthencBum). Some of these were reprinted in the Last 
Essays of Elia. He also used the signature perhaps a dozen 
times in his private correspondence, the last time, just before 

(1) Lucas, Works, Vol. II., p. 299. 



THE ESSAYS OF ELIA 29 

his death, writing *'Ch. Lamb, alias EHa." Even in print 
it was a perfectly transparent disguise to anybody who knew 
him or his earUer articles. 

The first collected edition of Elia, comprising the essays 
contained in the present book, was published in 1823, by 
Taylor and Hessey, the owners of The London Magazine. 
Aside from the continued Elia articles mentioned above, 
and a few short bits signed Lepus in The New Times, Lamb's 
latest work was once more largely dramatic and in verse. In 
1825 he wrote The Pawnbroker s Daughter, a farce turning 
on the inconvenient situation of a lover who has been hanged 
and. cut down. It was never played, though Lamb had hopes 
of it, but was printed in Blackwood's Magazine in 1830. In 
1827 he wrote the dramatic poem. The Wife's Trial, in which 
he strove again for a Shakespearean flavor, but which is more 
modern than John Woodvil. It was offered to Charles Kemble 
for production at Covent Garden Theatre. As Mr. Lucas 
says, Lamb neverseemsto haveconvinced himself that hecould 
not write successfully for the stage. He himself said that he 
had trouble with the "damned plot," but thought he could 
''find wit, passion, sentiment, character, and the like trifles." 
As a matter of fact, however, though he has abundance of 
feeling of his own, and a very sensitive and sympathetic 
appreciation of character, he lacks the dramatist's power to 
get inside a character and make it act and speak with life- 
likeness. The Wife's Trial was printed in Blackwood's, 
1828. 

In 1830 appeared, as the first fruits of Moxon*s newly 
established publishing business, Album Verses, containing 
occasional pieces written for ladies' albums, some sonnets, 
some translations of the Latin poems of Vincent Bourne (an 
English scholar of the eighteenth century), and a Pindaric 



30 INTRODUCTION 

Ode to the Treadmill. Lamb did not regard this collection 
very seriously, but some of the reviewers took it in all seri- 
ousness and fell foul of it. It contained the sonnet The 
Gipsy's Malison, previously printed in Blackwood's, 1829, 
after having been declined by The Gem; apropos of which 
exhibition of taste. Lamb got off one of his best witticisms: 
"The editors declined it, on the plea that it would shock all 
mothers. ... I am born out of time. I have no con- 
jecture about what the present world calls delicacy. I 
thought Rosamund Gray a pretty modest thing. Hessey 
assures me that the world would not bear it. I have lived to 
grow into an indecent character. When my sonnet was 
rejected, I exclaimed, 'Hang the age. I will write for 
Antiquity!'" 

In 1831 Moxon published an anonymous burlesque ballad, 
Satan in Search of a Wife, with grotesque illustrations by 
the famous Cruickshank. In 1833, after some difficulty and 
a lawsuit with Taylor, the former editor of The London 
Magazine, who claimed proprietary rights in the essays, 
Moxon published the Last Essays of Elia, containing the 
greater part of Lamb's prose written since the collected Elia 
of 1823, It was Lamb's last book. 



III. 

The Elia essays show Lamb at his best in his humor and 
fancy, his tenderness, his intimate personalness. If their 
serious cri deism is not quite so incisive and luminous as that 
of the essays on Hogarth and Shakespeare, pubUshed in 
The Reflector^ it is still admirably keen and delicate. Out of 
them we can — ^and we do — construct the real Charles Lamb 
himself , toiling in the prison-house of the Eastlndia Company, 
living his boyhood over again in imagination, cherishing his 
friends, smiling at us sometimes very wistfully, solacing him- 
self with his old authors, or bursting into mirth and puns — 
all this with that dark shadow of insanity and grief hanging 
over him. It was a brave soul; and he wins our affection the 
more strongly — "the best loved of English writers," he has 
been called — because, with all his self -revelation, he never 
thinks to let us see the heroic in him. 

It may not be amiss to point out in some detail the mani- 
festations of his chief traits. We recognize at once the per- 
vasiveness of his humor no less than the brilliancy of a par- 
ticular pun or an odd metaphor ingeniously spun out and 
varied. This humor is, as it were, a saturated solution 
so rich in intellectual constituents that it is ever on the point 
of crystallizing into wit; on the other hand, the substance of 
thought is so compounded with feeling that it is constantly 
on the point of turning into pathos. Though conspicuous 
and pervasive, it is quite indescribable in a single word or 
phrase. It is quick, yet not racy; lively, yet not boisterous 

31 



32 INTRODUCTION 

nor ever side-splitting, at least in his writing (though his 
jokes in company were sometimes Httle better than tom- 
foolery); extravagant, rare, elaborate, and minute, yet 
without that labored quality which we call far-fetched; 
delicate, yet saved from thinness by its ingenuity; bookish, 
delighting in verbal subtleties, yet richly appreciative of 
human comedy. It is a pity that the Dissertation Upon Roast 
Pig, easily the best known and probably the best enjoyed of 
the essays, is so generally accepted as the classical example 
of Lamb's humor. His fine sense for character, as in The Two 
Races of Men, is a finer thing than his gusto for pig, perfect 
as that is ; and the felicities of Distant Correspondents or The 
Praise of Chimney-Sweepers are superior, because involving 
a richer range of associations. 

His sympathetic nature, also, is evident. He is full of 
regard for the unfortunate and the helpless. Weakness 
moves his pity, not his scorn. His pity was active, finding 
its outlet in many an act of kindly help, not in theoretical 
humanitarianism. He would put his hand into his pocket 
for a beggar, raise a subscription, write an epilogue for a 
friend's play, revise a young poet's verses, find work for his 
servant's relatives. He is charitable in his judgments of 
men, unless, perhaps, of a stiff-necked prig^^^: such a one 
*'wolde he snibben sharply for the nones," like Chaucer's 
Parson. But benevolence and intellectual charity are by 
no means all of true sympathy. He was singularly sensitive 
to the appeal of widely different natures, and quick to 
understand and appreciate their strength or weakness, to 
catch and relish their peculiar quality, their flavor of- 
sweetness, richness, or pungency. Of this power of his, 

(]) See his indignant protest {Letter to Southey) against the illiberal cen- 
sure of his own and Leigh Hunt's and Hazlitt's moral views. 



THE ESSAYS OF ELIA 33 

such essays as The Old Benchers and Im'perfect Sympathies 
are good examples. 

He is always intensely personal. This means first that 
his interests are in the manners and thoughts and feelings of 
concrete men and women. He loved a "humor" in a man. 
He cared nothing about science or metaphysics. He wanted 
his abstract ideas mixed with flesh and blood. In politics 
he took a very small interest, and was a partisan, if at all, 
for his friends' sake, or because he could not bear in silence 
the personal affronts which the conduct of the Prince Regent 
gave not only to the Princess but to every decent subject as 
well. He refused, to the exasperation of some of his friends, 
to manifest any enthusiasm over Waterloo ; but rather strange- 
ly does not seem to have felt any deep pity for Napoleon's 
fate. He had few or none of what are called "views," even 
in literature or art, though he had strong preferences 
among writers and painters. He esteemed Coleridge and 
Wordsworth and liked their poetry; but he had no part 
in their declaration of literary independence. Serious judg- 
ments couched in general terms are hardly to be found in his 
essays ; his mental idiom, so to speak, is particular and 
specific. 

He is personal, in the second place, in that his view of every- 
body and everything takes its color from his own nature. 
It is a common enough trait, but Lamb has it in marked de- 
gree. As has well been said of him, "all that he knows or 
observes in the world of books or men becomes absorbed in 
the single life of his own mind, and is reproduced as part 
and parcel of Charles Lamb." That is, the reader feels that 
Lamb's sense of a fact is constantly interposed between him 
and the fact itself. This does not necessarily imply a sacrifice 
of accuracy or truth any more than when we look at the sun 



34 INTRODUCTION 

through a smoked glass. But I do not mean that Lamb is 
at all a dark or turbid medium. If Lamb's essays were 
paintings, we should say that they have a great deal of 
''atmosphere." 

This personal habit of mind explains the large amount of 
reminiscence in his work. His fondness for things as they 
had been is unmistakable — for the old benchers, the old 
actors, the old writers, old china, the old landmarks of the 
city. They were w^hat he was used to. He had made his 
discoveries once for all in his boyhood of the oddities in the 
Temple walks, of the theatre, of old books in Samuel Salt's 
library, of London. It was not the greatness of the city, not 
its growth, but the unchanging familiarity of its aspect that 
delighted him. "The disappearance of the old clock from 
St. Dunstan's church drew tears from him; nor could he 
^ver pass without emotion the place where Exeter Change once 
stood. "^^^ If he had been born and bred in the country, as 
Wordsworth was, he too would have loved its mountains, 
lakes, and wild flowers; but not in Wordsworth's way. 
For Wordsworth had a power of abstract thought, of 
imaginative vision, that saw behind all the separate facts 
of nature and the diverse operations of natural forces a 
unifying, universal Presence, "whose dwelling is the light of 
setting suns," and "in the heart of man," as well. That is 
a philosophical conception as well as a poetic one. Similarly 
there is a unifying, abstractly imaginative conception under- 
lying Wordsworth's Westminster Bridge sonnet on London : 
he felt the city to be a great organism, could imagine its 
"mighty heart." Such' poetic abstractions, equally with 
scientific ones, were foreign to Lamb. Possibly he failed to 
appreciate the country not only because he had not known 

(1) Moxon, quoted in Lucas, Life, Vol. II., p. 352. 



THE ESSAYS OF ELIA 35 

it well as a boy, but also because he felt it to b^ impersonal, 
fortuitous, somehow the result of vague, intangible force, not 
of sentient design and feeling. He was not interested in the 
city as a sociological fact: it was not for him the neces- 
sary result of general social pressure, which is abstract, 
intangible, impersonal. The city to him was the expression 
of separate, individual men's activity, the place where this 
man and this and this lived and talked and worked, the 
scene of the life of such people as he had early learned to 
know. Over it and all its doings was the glamor of his boy- 
hood's recollection. 

Again, this personal habit is the essence of his literary 
preferences. His criticism is not ''scientific." He would 
have been the last man to write a history of literature, to dis- 
cuss origins, to trace tendencies, to deal with poetry as the ex- 
pression of the composite mental and spiritual life of an age. 
The scientific temper is impersonal: its results are valid 
precisely in the degree in which it purges itself of in- 
dividuality. But Lamb's temper, if not scientific, is some- 
thing at least as fruitful. He is finely aesthetic. He does 
not apply principles or dogmas; he consults his taste. 
He is a connoisseur. He is like a wine-taster who knows 
little of vine-growing or the chemistry of wine-making but 
recognizes the rare bouquet of the precious vintage when 
he tastes it. There is ro denying that Lamb was of those 
whom Hazlitt^^^ rather contemptuously calls the Occult 
School of critics: "They discern no beauties but what are 
concealed from superficial eyes, and overlook all that are 
obvious to the vulgar part of mankind. . . . This is 
not envy or affectation, but a natural proneness to singularity, 
a love of what is odd and out of the way," But we may 

(1) On Criticism. Hazlitt had Lamb in mind. 



36 ' INTRODUCTION 

apply to Lamb what he himself said of Hazli tt: his "decisions 
(most profound and subtle where they are for the most part 
just) are more safely to be relied upon on subjects and authors 
he has a partiality for, than on such as he has conceived 
an accidental prejudice against." He differs from Hazlitt, 
however, in seldom obtruding his dislikes and hostilities 
upon our notice. 

The writers whom he loved best^^^ were naturally, there- 
fore, those of marked individuality, such as Sir Thomas 
Browne, Robert Burton, Izaak Walton, and Jeremy Taylor. 
He said that there were many whom he would have wished 
to see before Sir Isaac Newton and Locke, the author of 
the Essay on the Human Understanding, though he inad- 
vertently acknowledged that they bore the greatest names in 
English letters. " 'Yes, the greatest names,' he stammered 
out hastily, 'but they were not persons — not persons. . . 
Not characters, you know. . . . Beyond their contents 
there is nothing personally interesting in the men.' "^^^ He 
loved style and manner in writing, almost for its own sake; 
Hazlitt tells us in another place that he waded through great 
tomes of school divinity, not for the substance of theology 
that they contained, but for the pleasure he got out of their 
intricacy of style. And this feeling for the garb of thought 
seems to be a considerable element in his adoration of 
the Elizabethan dramatists : it was not only that the joy of 

(1) Lamb's disregard of the physical well-being of his books was positively 
shocking. His Enfield neighbor, Westwood, tells how they had been 
patched and botched by the cobbler Lamb got to repair them. He would 
throw presentation copies of his friends' books through the branches_of an 
apple tree, or roll them down the stairs. He was even vandal enough, 
when he wanted to furnish some forgotten garret in his Temple lodgings, 
to cut out the plates from his own books to cover the walls with; and he 
and Mary nearly wept when they found that a particularly fine set of plates 
to Ariosto could not be cut out because parts of the text were printed on 
the other side! 

(2) Hazlitt, On Persons One Would Wish to Have Seen. The essay is 
a most interesting account of one of Lamb's evenings. 



THE ESSAYS OF ELIA 37 

his first play was an imperishable thing; not only that in 
the drama he found that concrete human embodiment of 
thought already spoken of; not only that as a whole the 
earlier drama was conceived in grandeur and grandly 
executed; not only that the dramatists had each his own 
distinguishing character; but also that the very language 
in which the old plays were written, now consciously ornate 
and elaborate, now swift and simple beyond the reach of 
modern poetical phrase, now tortuous, ingenious, and compact 
to the point of undeniable obscurity, and always in idiom and 
vocabulary far enough remote from modern speech to pre- 
serve a tang of strangeness and wonder, seemed to bear a 
charmed life of its own, an existence, as it were, independent 
of its content. 

It may seem strange to speak of Lamb's nature, brimming 
over with ready sympathy and glowing with humor, as in 
any way rigid. His very style — the cast of his sentences, the 
variety of his diction — is mobility itself. Yet there is a lack 
of breadth and of solidity in him which, with his delicacy, 
produces an impression of fragilitj^ Sustained effort is 
impossible for him — perhaps the India House absorbed all 
he had of that. He does everything by flashes. His one 
story, Rosamund Gray, is slender. His criticism is keen and 
penetrating, but never thorough or systematic. His work on 
the old dramatists was by excerpts and brief notes. His 
essay on The Artificial Comedy of the Last Century, pretty 
nearly his only bit of critical generalizing in Elia, soon 
turns away to consider particular actors. He seldom reasons 
anything through. He has' often no plan or outline in his 
composition. "The Essays," he writes to his publisher, 
"want no Preface; they are all Preface. A Preface is nothing 
but a talk with the reader; and they do nothing else." The 



38 INTRODUCTION 

subjects are varied, but the manner is the same, or nearly so. 
The Dissertation Upo?i Roast Pig is exceptional in that it 
contains a story ; but it soon breaks off into personal apprecia- 
tion of pig as pork. It has unmistakably the essential 
quality of the intimate essay as a type, in that it springs from 
personal experience, feeling, and taste. Everywhere Lamb is 
the same tender-hearted, humorous, fanciful, odd fellow 
talking to us in brief monologue. And it is not so much what 
he talks of as his way of conceiving it and setting it off, that 
claims our attention and affection. 

He gives us little new or positive information — except about 
himself. He writes not for our profit, but for our pleasure, 
because for his own pleasure. He explains little or nothing; 
he has no bones to pick with us over theories; he does not 
preach to us or lecture to us. I will not say that he does 
not make us wiser, for a man is sometimes the wiser for a 
laugh over an odd character or a tear over a pathetic 
reminiscence. We feel with him the humor or the sadness 
or the beauty of the things that stirred him. His feeling is 
sometimes so whimsical as to be unconvincing; sometimes 
so fine drawn as to strike ordinary, norntal sensibilities as 
perverse; usually so fresh, un copied, unstudied that it 
altogether captivates and possesses us. 



CHIEF DATES IN LAMB'S LIFE. 

1775. Born February 10, in Crown Office Row Innei 

Temple. 

1782. Entered Christ's Hospital. 

1789. Left school. 

1791. Entered the service of the South Sea Company. 

1792. Entered the service of the East India Company. 
1796. Mary Lamb killed her mother. 

1796. Four sonnets published in Coleridge's Poems on 
Various Subjects; further contributions to the 
second edition (1797). 
1798. Blank Verse by Charles Lloyd and Charles Lamb. 

Rosamund Graf 
1802. John Woodvil 

1806. Mr. H — produced at Drury Lane Theatre. 

1807. Tales from Shakespear. 

1808. Specimens of English Dramatic Poets. 
The Adventures of Ulysses. 

Mrs. Leicester's School (dated 1S09). 

1809. Poetry for Children. 

1810. Began to write for Leigh Hunt's Reflector. 

1811. Prince Dorus. 

1818. The Works of Charles Lamb (collected edition, 2 

vols.). 
1820. Began to write for The London Magazine, 
1823. Elia published in collected form. 

Charles and Mary adopted Emma Isola. 
3^ 



40 INTRODUCTION 

1825. Retired from the East India House with a pension. 

1830. Album Verses. 

1831. Satan in Search of a Wife. 

1833. The Last Essays of Elia in collected form. 

1834. Died, at Edmonton, December 27, aged 59 years, 

10 months. 



BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTF 

Reprints of single works by Lamb (chiefly, of course, the 
Tales from Shakespear and the two series of EHa essays) are 
legion; and collected editions of the works and letters are 
many. Three good modern collected editions, each contain- 
ing some matter necessarily omitted from the other two, are 
easily accessible, viz: 

The Eversley Edition, edited with Notes and Introduction 
by the Reverend Canon Alfred Ainger, London, 1878-88. 
(Works, 4 vols.; Letters, 2 vols.; Life, 1 vol.). 
The Works of Charles Lamb, edited by William Macdonald, 
London and New York, 1903. 

(Works, 10 vols.; Letters, 2 vols. Vol. 1 has a Preface 
on "Editions Past and Present" ; vol. 2 a short Memoir. 
Portraits, and spirited pen-and-ink illustrations by C. 
E. Brock.) 
The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, edited by E. V. 
Lucas, London and New York, 1903-5. 
(Works, 5 vols.; Letters, 2 vols. Many portraits, fac- 
similes, maps, pictures, etc. Very fully annotated.) 
For Lamb's life see the articles in the Encyclopedia Britan- 
nica, ^9th edition, and the Dictionary of National Biog- 
raphy, both by Canon Ainger; also his volume on Lamb 
in "The English Men of Letters" series, of which latter the 
Life included in the Eversley Edition is an enlargement. 
But the most complete account is The Life of Charles Lamb, 
by E. V. Lucas (G. P. Putnam's Sons, New York and London, 
1905), in two volumes. 

41 



42 INTRODUCTION 

Of his contemporaries who have left us their legacies of 
record and reminiscence the most important are William 
Hazlitt (in Table Talk and the Spirit of the Age), Leigh 
Hunt (in Lord Byron and Some of His Contemporaries and 
Autobiography), Henry Crabb Robinson (in his Diary), 
Thomas DeQuincey {Recollections of Charles Lamb, Massor ^s 
collected ed., vol. 3. and Charles Lamb, same ed., vol. 5), 
Thomas Noon Taifourd (Works of Charles Lamb, 1838, aid 
Final Memorials of Charles Lamb), Bryan W.Procter {Charles 
Lamb, a Memoir, by Barry Cornwall), and P. G. Patmore 
{My Friends and Acquaintances). 

In the Footprints of Charles Lamb, by Benjamin E. Martin, 
New York, 1890. contains a number of pictures of places 
associated with Lamb's memory, and an elaborate bibliog- 
raphy (not perfectly accurate) down to 1888, by E. D. North. 

Of the mass of critical essays on Lamb see A. Birrell 
{Obiter Dicta, 2nd Series), Walter Pater {Appreciations), 
A. C. Swinburne {Miscellanies), Paul E. More (Shelburne 
Essays}. 



LIA 



BY 



CHARLES LAMB 



THE ESSAYS OF ELIA 



THE SOUTH-SEA HOUSE. 

Reader, in thy passage from the Bank — where thou hast 
been receiving thy half-yearly dividends (supposing thou art 
a lean annuitant like myself) — to the Flower Pot, to secure 
a place for Dalston, or Shacklewell, or some other thy 
5 suburban retreat northerly, — didst thou never observe a 
melancholy-looking, handsome, brick and stone edifice, to 
the left — where Threadneedle Street abuts upon Bishops- 
gate? I daresay thou hast often admired its magnificent 
portals ever gaping wide, and disclosing to view a grave 

10 court, with cloisters, and pillars, with few or no traces of 
goers-in or comers-out — a desolation something like 
Balclutha's.^ 

This was once a house of trade, — a centre of busy 
interests. The throng of merchants was here — the quick 

15 pulse of gain — and here some forms of business are still 
kept up, though the soul be long since fled. Here are still 
to be seen stately porticoes; imposing staircases; oflBces 
roomy as the state apartments in palaces — deserted, or 
thinly peopled with a few straggling clerks; the still more 

20 sacred interiors of court and committee-rooms, with vener- 
able faces of beadles, door-keepers — directors seated in 
form on solemn days (to proclaim a dead dividend), at long 
worm-eaten tables, that have been mahogany, with tar- 

1 "I passed by the walls of Balclutha, and they were desolate." — 
Obsian. (L.) 



46 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA 

nished gilt-leather coverings^ supporting massy silver ink- 
stands long since dry; — the oaken wainscots hung with 
pictures of deceased governors and sub-governors, of Queen 
Anne, and the two first monarchs of the Brunswick dynasty; 
— huge charts, which subsequent discoveries have anti. s 
quated; — dusty maps of Mexico, dim as dreams, — and 
soundings of the Bay of Panama ! — The long passages hung 
with buckets, appended, in idle row, to walls, whose sub- 
stance might defy any, short of the last conflagration: — 
with vast ranges of cellarage under all, where dollars and i© 
pieces of eight once lay, an "unsunned heap,"^ for Mammon 
to have solaced his solitary heart withal, — long since dis- 
sipated, or scattered into air at the blast of the breaking of 

that famous Bubble. 

Such is the South-Sea House. At least, siich it was is 
forty years ago, when I knew it, — a magnificent relic! 
What alterations may have been made in it since, I have 
had no opportunities of verifying. Time, I take for granted, 
has not freshened it. No wind has resuscitated the face of 
the sleeping waters. A thicker crust by this time stagnates 20 
upon it. The moths, that were then battening upon its 
obsolete ledgers and day-books, have rested from their 
depredations, but other light generations have succeeded, 
making fine fretwork among their single and double entries. 
Layers of dust have accumulated (a superfoetation of dirt!) 25 
upon the old layers, that seldom used to be disturbed, save 
by some curious finger, now and then, inquisitive to explore 
the mode of book-keeping in Queen Anne's reign ; or, with 
less hallowed curiosity, seeking to unveil some of the 
mysteries of that tremendous hoax, whose extent the petty 30 
peculators of our day look back upon with the same 

1 CoMus, 1. 398. 



THE SOUTH-SEA HOUSE 47 

expression of incredulous admiration, and hopeless am- 
bition of rivalry, as would become the puny face of modem 
conspiracy contemplating the Titan size of Vaux's super- 
human plot. 
5 Peace to the manes of the Bubble! Silence and destitu- 
tion are upon thy walls, proud house, for a memorial! 

Situated as thou art, in the very heart of stirring and 
living commerce, — amid the fret and fever of speculation — ■ 
with the Bank, and the 'Change, and the India House 

10 above thee, in the hey-day of present prosperity, with 
their important faces, as it were, insulting thee, their 'poor 
neighbor out of business — to the idle and merely contem- 
plative, — to such as me, old house! there is a charm in 
thy quiet: — a cessation — a coolness from business — an 

15 indolence almost cloistral — which is delightful ! With what 
reverence have I paced thy great bare rooms and courts at 
eventide! They spoke of the past: — the shade of some 
dead accountant, with visionary pen in ear, would flit by me, 
stiff as in life. Living accounts of accountants puzzle me. 

20 I have no skill in figuring. But thy great dead tomes, 
which scarce three degenerate clerks of the present day 
could lift from their enshrining shelves — ^with their old 
fantastic flourishes, and decorative rubric interlacings — 
their sums in triple column iations, set down with formal 

25 superfluity of ciphers — ^with pious sentences at the begin- 
ning, without which our religious ancestors never ventured 
to open a book of business, or bill of lading — the costly 
vellum covers of some of them almost persuading us that we 
are got into some better library, — are very agreeable and 

30 edifying spectacles. I can look upon these defunct dragons 
with complacency. Thy heavy odd-shaped ivory-handled 
penknives (our ancestors had everything on a larger scale 




48 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA 



than we have hearts for) are as good as anything from 
Herculaneum. The pounce-boxes of our days have gone 
retrograde. 

* The very clerks which I remember in the South-Sea 
House — I speak of forty years back — had an air very ^ 
different from those in the public offices that I have had 
to do with since. They partook of the genius of the 
place ! 

There were mostly (for the establishment did not admit 
of superfluous salaries) bachelors. Generally (for they had lo 
not much to do) persons of a curious and speculative turn 
of mind. Old-fashioned, for a reason mentioned before. 
•Humorists, for they were of all descriptions; and, not 
having been brought together in early life (which has a 
tendency to assimilate the members of corporate bodies to is 
each other), but, for the most part, placed in this house in 
ripe or middle age, they necessarily carried into it their 
separate habits and oddities, unqualified, if I may so speak, 
as into a common stock. Hence they formed a sort of 
Noah's ark. Odd fishes. A lay-monastery. Domestic re- 20 
tainers in a great house, kept more for show than use. Yet 
pleasant fellows, full of chat — and not a few among them 
had arrived at considerable proficiency on the German flute. 

The cashier at that time was one Evans, a Cambro- 
Briton. He had something of the choleric complexion of 25 
his countrymen stamped on his visage, but was a worthy 
sensible man at bottom. He wore his hair, to the Idst, 
powdered and frizzed out, in the fashion which I remember 
to have seen in caricatures of what were termed. In my 
young days, Maccaronies. He was the last of that race of so 
beaux. Melancholy as a gib-cat^ over his counter all the 

1 I. Henry IV., I. 2. S3. 



THE SOUTH-SEA HOUSE 49 

forenoon, I think I see him making up his cash (as they 
call it) with tremulous fingers, as if he feared every one 
about him was a defaulter; in his hypochondry ready to 
imagine himself one; haunted, at least, with the idea of 
5 the possibility of his becoming one: his tristful visage clear- 
ing up a little over his roast neck of veal at Anderton's at 
two (where his picture still hangs, taken a little before his 
death by desire of the master of the coffee-house, which he 
had frequented for the last five-and-twenty years), but not 

10 attaining the meridian of its animation till evening brought 
on the hour of tea and visiting. The simultaneous sound of 
his well-known rap at the door with the stroke of the clock 
announcing six, was a topic of never-failing mirth in the 
families which this dear old bachelor gladdened with his 

1^ presence. Then was his forte, his glorified hour! How 
would he chirp, and expand over a muffin! How would 
he dilate into secret history! His countryman Pennant 
himself, in particular, could not be more eloquent than he 
in relation to old and new London — the site of old theatres, 

20 churches, streets gone to decay — where Rosamond's pond 
stood — the Mulberry Gardens — and the Conduit in Cheap 
— with many a pleasant anecdote, derived from paternal 
tradition, of those grotesque figures which Hogarth has 
immortalised in his picture of Noon, — the w^orthy descend- 

25 ants of those heroic confessors, who, flying to this country, 
from the wrath of Louis the Fourteenth and his dragoons, 
kept alive the flame of pure religion in the sheltering 
obscurities of Hog Lane, and the vicinity of the Seven 
Dials! 

30 Deputy, under Evans, was Thomas Tame. He had the 
air and stoop of a nobleman. You would have taken him 
for one, had you met him in one of the passages leading to 



50 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA 

Westminster Hall. By stoop I mean that gentle bending 
of the body forwards, which, in great men, must be sup- 
posed to be the effect of an habitual condescending attention 
to the applications of their inferiors. While he held you in 
converse, you felt strained to the height in the colloquy. 5 
The conference over, you were at leisure to smile at the 
comparative insignificance of the pretensions which had just 
awed you. His intellect was of the shallowest order. It 
did not reach to a saw or a proverb. His mind was in its 
original state of white paper. A sucking babe might have 10 
posed him. What was it then? Was he rich? Alas, no! 
Thomas Tame was very poor. Both he and his wife looked 
outwardly gentlefolks, when I fear all was not well at all 
times within. She had a neat meagre person, which it was 
evident she had not sinned in over-pampering; but in 15 
its veins was noble blood. She traced her descent, by 
some labyrinth of relationship, which I never thoroughly 
understood, — much less can explain with any heraldic 
certainty at this time of day, — to the illustrious, but unfor- 
tunate house of Derwentwater. This was the secret of 20 
Thomas's stoop. This was the thought — the sentiment — 
the bright solitary star of your lives, — ye mild a-nd happy 
pair, — which cheered you in the night of intellect, and in 
the obscurity of your station ! This was to you instead of 
riches, instead of rank, instead of glittering attainments: 25 
and it was worth them all together. You insulted none 
with it; but, while you wore it as a piece of defensive 
armor only, no insult likewise could reach you through it. 
Decus et solamen} 

Of quite another stamp was the then accountant, John so 
Tipp. He neither pretended to high blood, nor in good 

1 Virgil, Aeneid, X., 858. 



THE SOUTH-SEA HOUSE 51 

truth cared one fig about the matter. He "thought an 
accountant the greatest character in the world, and himself 
the greatest accountant in it."^ Yet John was not without 
his hobby. The fiddle relieved his vacant hours. He sang, 
5 certainly with other notes than to the Orphean lyre.^ He 
did indeed scream and scrape most abominably. His 
fine suite of official rooms in Threadneedle Street, which, 
without anything very substantial appended to them, were 
enough to enlarge a man's notions of himself that lived in 

10 them — (I know not who is the occupier of them now) — 
resounded fortnightly tp the notes of a concert of "sweet 
breasts," as our ancestors would have called them, culled 
from club-rooms and orchestras — chorus singers — first and 
second violoncellos — double basses — and clarionets — who 

16 ate his cold mutton, and drank his punch, and praised hij 
ear. He sate like Lord Midas among them. But at the 
desk Tipp was quite another sort of creature. Then6e all 
ideas, that were purely ornamental, were banished. You 
could not speak of anything romantic without rebuke. 

20 Politics were excluded. A newspaper was thought too re- 
fined and abstracted. The whole duty of man consisted in 
writing off dividend warrants. The striking of the annual 
balance in the company's books (which, perhaps, differed 
from the balance of last year in the sum of £25, Is. 6d.) 

25 occupied his days and nights for a month previous. Not 
that Tipp was blind to the deadness of things (as they call 
them in the city) in his beloved house, or did not sigh for a 
return of the old stirring days when South-Sea hopes were 
young — (he was indeed equal to the wielding of any the 

30 most intricate accounts of the most flourishing company in 



1 Fielding, Joseph Andrews, Bk. III., Ch. 5 (adapted). 

2 Paradise Lost, III., 17. 



52 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA 

these or those days): — but to a genuine accountant the dif- 
ference of proceeds is as nothing. The fractional farthing is 
as dear to his heart as the thousands which stand before it. 
He is the true actor, who, whether his part be a prince or a 
peasant, must act it with Hke intensity. With Tipp form 5 
was everything. His life was formal. His actions seemed 
ruled with a ruler. His pen was not less erring than his 
heart. He made the best executor in the world: he was 
plagued with incessant executorships accordingly, ^hich ex- 
cited his spleen and soothed* his vanity in equal ratios. 10 
He would swear (for Tipp swore) at the little orphans, 
whose rights he would guard with a tenacity like the grasp 
of the dying hand that commended their interests to his pro- 
tection. With all this there was about him a sort of timidity 
— (his few enemies used to give it a worse name) — a some- 15 
thing which, in reverence to the dead, we will place, if you 
please, a little on this side of the heroic. Nature certainly 
had been pleased to endow John Tipp with a sufficient 
measure of the principle of self-preservation. There is a 
cowardice which we do not despise, because it has nothing 20 
base or treacherous in its elements; it betrays itself, not you: 
it is mere temperament; the absence of the romantic and the 
enterprising; it sees a lion in the way, and will not, with 
Fortinbras, "greatly find quarrel in a straw,"^ when some 
supposed honor is at stake. Tipp never mounted the box 25 
of a stage-coach in his life; or leaned against the rails of 
a balcony; or walked upon the ridge of a parapet; or looked 
down a precipice; or let off a gun; or went upon a water- 
party; or would wilhngly let you go if he could have helped 
it: neither was it recorded of him, that for lucre, or for 30 
intimidation, he ever forsook friend or principle. 

1 Hamlet, IV., iv., 55. 



THE SOUTH-SEA HOUSE 53 

Whom next shall we summon from the dusty dead, in 
whom common qualities become uncommon? Can I 
forget thee, Henry Man, the wit, the polished man of 
letters, the author, of the South-Sea House? who never 
5 enteredst thy office in a morning or quittedst it in mid- 
day — (what didst thou in an office?) — without some quirk 
that left a sting ! Thy gibes and thy jokes are now extinct, 
or survive but in two forgotten volumes, which I had the 
good fortune to rescue from a stall in Barbican, not three 

10 days ago, and found thee terse, fresh, epigrammatic, as 
alive. Thy wit is a little gone by in these fastidious days — ■ 
thy topics are staled by the "new-born gauds"^ of the time: 
- — but great thou used to be in Public Ledgers, and in 
Chronicles, upon Chatham and Shelburne, and Rocking- 

,15 ham, and Howe, and Burgoyne, and Clinton, and the war 
which ended in the tearing from Great Britain her rebellious 
colonies — and Keppel, and Wilkes, and Sawbridge, and 
Bull, and Dunning, and Pratt, and Richmond, — and such 
small Dolitics.- — — 

(JO A little less facetious, and a great deal more obstreperous, 
was fine rattling, rattleheaded Plumer. He was descended 
— ^not in a right line, reader (for his lineal pretensions, like 
his personal, favored a little of the sinister bend) — from the 
Plumers of Hertfordshire. So tradition gave him out; and 

,'■5 certain family features not a little sanctioned the opinion. 
Certainly old W^alter Plumer (his reputed author) had been 
a rake in his days, and visited much in Italy, and had seen 
the world. He was uncle, bachelor-uncle, to the fine old 
Whig still living, who has represented the county in so 
many successive parliaments, and has a fine old mansion 
near Ware. Walter flourished in George the Second's days, 

1 Troilu3 and Cressida, III.,iii., 176. 



54 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA ^ 

and was the same who was summoned before the House of 
Commons about a business of franks, with the old Duchess 
of Marlborough. You may read of it in Johnson ^s Life of 
Cave. Cave came off cleverly in that business. It is certain 
our Plumer did nothing to discountenance the rumor. 5 
He rather seemed pleased whenever it was, with all 
gentleness, insinuated. But, besides his family pretensions, 
Plumer was an engaging fellow, and sang gloriously. 

Not so sweetly sang Plumer as thou sangest, mild 

child-like, pastoral M ; a flute's breathing less divinely 10 

whispering than thy Arcadian melodies, when in tones 
worthy of Arden, thou didst chant that song sung by 
Amiens to the banished Duke, which proclaims the winter 
wind more lenient than for a man to be ungrateful.^ Thy 

sire was old surly M , the unapproachable church- 15 

warden of Bishopsgate. He knew not what he did, when 
he begat thee, like spring, gentle offspring of blustering 
winter: — only unfortunate in thy ending, which should have 
been mild, conciliatory, swan-like. 

Much remains to sing. Many fantastic shapes rise up, 20: 
but they must be mine in private: — already I have fooled 
the reader to the top of his bent;^ — else could I omit that 
strange creature Woollett, who existed in trying the ques- 
tion, and bought litigations? — and still stranger, inimitable, 
solemn Hepworth, from whose gravity Newton might 25 
have deduced the law of gravitation. How profoundly 
would he nib a pen — with what deliberation would he wet 
a wafer! 

But it is time to close — night's wheels are rattling fast 
over me — it is proper to have done with this solemn 30 
mockery. 

1 As You Like It, II., vii. 
• 2 Hami^ep. III., ii., 401. 



OXFORD IN THE VACATION 55 

Reader, what if I have been playing with thee all this 
while — peradventure the very names, which I have sum- 
moned up before thee, are fantastic, insubstantial — like 

Henry Pimpernel, and old John Naps of Greece } 

5 Be satisfied that something answering to them has had a 
being. Their importance is from the past. 

OXFORD IN THE VACATION. 

Casting a preparatory glance at the bottom of this article, 
as the. wary connoisseur in prints, with cursory eye (which, 
while it reads, seems ^s though- it read not), never fails to 

10 consult the quis sculpsit in the corner, before he pronounces 

some rare piece to be a Vivares, or a Woollett methinks 

I hear you exclaim, reader, Who is Eliaf ■ 

Because in my last I tried to divert thee with some half- 
forgotten humors of some old clerks defunct, in an old 

15 house of business, long since gone to decay, doubtless you 
have already set me down in your mind as one of the self- 
same college — a votary of the desk — a notched and cropt 
scrivener — one that sucks his sustenance, as certain sick 
people are said to do, through a quill. 

20 Well, I do agnize something of the sort. I confess that 
it is my humor, my fancy — in the forepart of the day, when 
the mind of your man of letters requires some relaxation — 
(and none better than such as at first sight seems most 
abhorrent from his beloved studies) — to while away some 

25 good hours of my time in the contemplation of indigoes, 
cottons, raw silks, piece-goods, flowered or otherwise. In 
the first place . . . and then it sends you home 
with such increased appetite to your books 

1 The Taming of the Shrew, Induction, II., 96. 



56 . THE ESSAYS OF ELIA 

not to say, that your outside sheets, and waste wrappers of 
foolscap, do receive into them, most kindly and naturally, 
the impression of sonnets, epigrams, essays — so that the 
very parings of a counting-house are, in some sort, the set- 
tings up of an author. The enfranchised quill, that has 5 
plodded all the morning among the cart-rucks of figures 
and cyphers, frisks and curvets so at its ease over the flowery 
carpet-ground of a midnight dissertation. It feels its pro- 
motion. '. . . So that you see, upon the whole, the 
literary dignity of Elia is very little, if at all, compromised 10 
in the condescension. 

Not that, in my anxious detail of the many commodities 
incidental to the life of a public office, I would be thought 
blind to certain flaws, which a cunning carper might be able 
to pick in this Joseph's vest. And here I must have leave, 15 
in the fullness of my soul, to regret the abolition, and doing- 
away with altogether, of those consolatory interstices, and 
sprinklings of freedom, through the four seasons, — the red- 
lett&r days, now become, to all intents and purposes, dead- 
letter days. There was Paul, and Stephen, and Barnabas — 

Andrew and John, men famous in old times ; ^ 

we were used to keep all their days holy, as long back as 
I was at school at Christ's. I remember their effigies, by 
the same token, in the old Baskett Prayer-book. There 
hung Peter in his uneasy posture — holy Bartlemy in the 
troublesome act of flaying, after the famous Marsyas by 
Spagnoletti. — I honored them all, and could almost have 
wept the defalcation of Iscariot — so much did we love to 
keep holy memories sacred: — only methought I a little 
grudged at the coalition of the better Jude with Simon — 

1 Paradise Regained, II., 7. 



20 



25 



30 



OXFORD IN THE VACATION 57 

clubbing (as it were) their sanctities together, to make 
up one poor gaudy-day between them — as an economy 
unworthy of the dispensation. 

These were bright visitations in a scholar's and a clerk's 
5 life — "far off their coming shone."* — I was as good as an 
almanac in those days. I could have told you such a 
saint's-day falls out next week, or the week after. Perad- 
venture the Epiphany, by some periodical infelicity, would, 
once in six years, merge in a Sabbath. Now am I little 

10 better than one of the profane.^ Let me not be thought to 
arraign the wisdom of my civil superiors, who have judged 
the further observation of these holy tides to be papistical, 
superstitious. Only in a custom of such long standing, 
methinks, if their Holinesses the Bishops had, in decency, 

15 been first sounded — but I am wading out of my depths. I 
am not the man to decidu the limits of civil and ecclesiastical 
authority — I am plain Elia — no Selden, nor Archbishop 
Usher — though at present in the thick of their books, here 
in the heart of learning, under the shadow of the mighty 

20 Bodley. 

I can here play the gentleman, enact the student. To 
such a one as myself, who has been defrauded in his young 
years of the sweet food of academic institution, nowhere is so 
pleasant, to while away a few idle weeks at, as one or other 

^^ of the Universities. Their vacation, too, at this time of the 
year, falls in so pat with ours. Here I can take my walk* 
unmolested, and fancy myself of what degree or standing I 
please. I seem admitted ad eundem. I fetch up past 
opportunities. I can rise at the chapel-bell, and dream that 

"^ it rings for me. In moods of humility I can be a Sizar, or a 

1 Paradise Lost, VI., 768. 

2 I. Henry IV., I., ii., 105. 



58 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA 

Servitor. When the peacock vein rises, I strut a Grentleman 
Commoner. In graver moments, I proceed Master of Arts. 
Indeed I do not think I am much unhke that respectable 
character. I have seen your dim-eyed vergers, and bed- 
makers in spectacles, drop a bow or curtsey, as I pass, § 
wisely mistaking me for something of the sort. I go about 
in black, which favors the notion. Only in Christ Church 
reverend quadrangle, I can be content to pass for nothing 
short of a Seraphic Doctor. 

The' walks at these times are so much one's own, — the lo 
tall trees of Christ's, the groves of Magdalen I The halls 
deserted, and with open doors, inviting one to slip in un per- 
ceived, and pay a devoir to some Founder, or noble or royal 
Benefactress (that should have been ours) whose portrait 
seems to smile upon their over-looked beadsman, and to is 
adopt me for their own. Then, to take a peep in by the 
way at the butteries, and sculleries, redolent of antique 
hospitality: the immense caves of kitchens, kitchen fire- 
places, cordial recesses; ovens whose first pies were baked 
four centuries ago; and spits which have cooked for 20 
Chaucer! Not the meanest minister among the dishes but 
is hallowed to me through his imagination, and the Cook 
goes forth a Manciple. 

Antiquity! thou wondrous charm, what art thou? that, 
being nothing, art everything ! When thou wert, thou wert 25 
not antiquity — then thou wert nothing, but hadst a remoter 
antiquity, as thou calledst it, to look back to with blind 
veneration; thou thyself being to thyself flat, jejune, 
modern! What mystery lurks in this retroversion? or what 
half Januses^ are we, that cannot look forward with the so 
same idolatry with which we for ever revert! The mighty 

1 Januses of one face. — Sir Thomas Browne. (L.) 



OXFORD IN THE VACATION 59 

future is as nothing, being everything! the past is every- 
thing, being nothing! 

What were thy dark ages? Surely the sun rose as brightly 
then as now, and man got him to his work in the morning. 
5 Why is it that we can never hear mention of them without 
an accompanying feeling, as though a palpable obscure had 
dimmed the face of things, and that our ancestors wandered 
to and fro groping! 

Above all thy rarities, old Oxenford, what do most arride 

10 and solace me, are thy repositories of mouldering learning, 

thy shelves 

What a place to be in is an old library! It seems as 
though all the souls of all the writers, that have bequeathed 
their labors to these Bodleians, were reposing here, as in 

15 some dormitory, or middle state. I do not want to handle, 
to profane the leaves, their winding-sheets. I could as soon 
dislodge a shade. I seem to inhale learning, walking amid 
their foliage; and the odor of their old moth-scented 
coverings is fragrant as the first bloom of those sciential 

20 apples which grew amid the happy orchard. 

Still less have I curiosity to disturb the elder repose of 
MSS. Those vari(s lectiones, so tempting to the more 
erudite palates, do but disturb and unsettle my faith. I am 
no Herculanean raker. The credit of the three witnesses 

25 might have slept unimpeached for me. I leave these 
curiosities to Porson, and to G. D. — whom, by the way, I 
found busy as a moth over some rotten archive, rummaged 
out of some seldom-explored press, in a nook at Oriel. 
With long poring, he is grown almost into a book. He 

3to stood as passive as one by the side of the old shelves. I 
longed to new-coat him in Russia, and assign him his place. 
He might have mustered for a tall Scapula. 



60 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA 

D. is assiduous in his visits to these seats of learning. 
No inconsiderable portion of his moderate fortune, I appre- - 
hend, is consumed in journeys between them and Clifford's | 
Inn — where, like a dove on the asp's nest, he has long 
taken up his unconscious abode, amid an incongruous 5 
assembly of attorneys' clerks, apparitors, promoters, vermin 
of the law, among whom he sits, "in calm and sinless 
peace."^ The fangs of the law pierce him not — the winds 
of litigation blow over his humble chambers — the hard 
sheriff's ofl&cer moves his hat as he passes — ^legal nor illegal 10 
discourtesy touches him — ^none thinks of offering violence or 
iinjustice to him — ^you would as soon "strike an abstract 
idea." 

D. has been engaged, he tells me, through a course of 
laborious years, in an investigation into all curious matter 15 
connected with the two Universities; and has lately lit 

upon a MS. collection of charters, relative to C , by 

which he hopes to settle some disputed points— particularly 
that long controversy between them as to priority of foun- 
dation. The ardor with which he engages in these liberal 20 
pursuits, I am afraid; has not met with all the encourage- 
ment it deserved, either here, or at C . Your caputs, 

and heads of Colleges, care less than anybody else about 
these questions. — Contented to suck the milky fountains of 
their Alma Maters, without inquiring into the venerable 25 
gentlewomen's years, they rather hold such curiosities to 
be impertinent — unreverend. They have their good glebe 
lands in manu, and care not much to rake into the title- 
deeds. I gather at least so much from other sources, for 
D. is not a man to complain. 30 

D. s|arted like an unbroke heifer, when I interrupted 

1 Paradise Regained, IV., 425. 



OXFORD IN THE VACATION 61 

him. A priori it was not very probable that we should 
have mel; in Oriel. But D. would have done the same, had 
I accosted him on the sudden in his own walks in Clifford's 
Inn, or in the Temple. In addition to a provoking short- 
5 sightedness (the effect of late studies and watchings at the 
midnight oil), D. is the most absent of men. He made a 
call the other morning at our friend MJs in Bedford Square ; 
and finding nobody at home, was ushered into the hall, 
where asking for pen and ink, with great exactitude of 

10 purpose he enters me his name in the book — ^which ordi- 
narily lies about in such places, to record the failures 
of the untimely or unfortunate visitor — and takes his leave 
with many ceremonies, and professions of regret. Some 
two or three hours after, his walking destinies returned him 

15 into the same neighborhood again, and again the quiet 
image of the fireside circle at M.'s — Mrs. M. presiding at it 
like a Queen Lar, with pretty A. S. at her side — ^striking 
irresistibly on his fancy, he makes another call (forgetting 
that they were "certainly not to return from the country 

20 before that day week") and disappointed a second time, 
inquires for pen and paper as before: again the book is 
brought, and in the line just above that in which he is 
about to print his second name (his re-script) — ^his first 
name (scarce dry) looks out upon him another Sosia, or as 

}5 if a man should suddenly encounter his ow^n duplicate I 
The effect may be conceived. D. made many a good 
resolution against any such lapses in future. I hope he will 
not keep them too rigorously. 

For with G. D. — to be absent from the body, is some- 

times (not to speak it profanely) to be present with the 
Lord.^ At the very time when, personally encountering 
1 II. Corinthians, v., 8. 



62 THE ESSAYS OP ELIA 

thee, he passes on with no recognition — or, being stopped, 
starts like a thing surprised — at that moment, reader, he is 
on Mount Tabor — or Parnassus — or co-sphered with Plato 
— or, with Harrington, framing "immortal commonwealths" 
— devising some plan of amelioration to thy country, or thy 6 
species — peradventure meditating some individual kindness 
of courtesy, to be done to thee thyself, the returning con- 
sciousness of which made him start so guiltily at thy 
obtruded personal presence. 

[D. commenced life after a course of hard study in the lo 
''House of pure lEmanuel," as usher to a knavish fanatic 

schoolmaster at ,at a salary of eight pounds per annum, 

with Ward and lodging. Of this' poor stipend he never 
received above half in all the laborious years he served this 
man. He tells a pleasant anecdote, that when poverty, is 
staring out at his ragged knees, has sometimes compelled 
him, against the modesty of his nature, to hint at arrears, 
Dr. — —would take no immediate notice, but after supper, 
when the school was called together to even-song, he would 
never fail to introduce some instructive homily against 20 
riches, and the corruption of the heart occasioned through 
the desire of them — ending with "Lord, keep thy servants, 
above all things, from the heinous sin of avarice. Having 
^ood and raiment, let us therewithal be content. Give me 
Agar's wish" — and the like — which, to the little auditory, 25 
sounded like a doctrine full of Christian prudence and 
simplicity, but to poor D. was ' a receipt in full for that 
quarter's demand at least. 

And D. has been under-working for himself ever since; — 
drudging at low rates for unappreciating booksellers, — ■ so 
wasting his fine erudition in silent corrections of the classics, 
and in those unostentatious but solid services to learning 



OXFORD IN THE VACATION 63 

which commonly fall to the lot of laborious scholars, who 
have not the heart to sell themselves to the best advantage. 
He has published poems, which do not sell, because their 
character is unobtrusive, like his own, and because he has 

i 6 been too much absorbed in ancient literature to know what 
the popular mark in poetry is, even if he could have hit it. 
And, therefore, his verses are properly, what he terms them, 
crotchets; voluntaries; odes to liberty and spring; effusions; 
little tributes and offerings, left behind him upon tables and 

110 window-seats at parting from friends' houses; and from all 
the inns of hospitality, where he has been courteously (or 
but tolerably) received in his pilgrimage. If his muse of 
kindness halt a little behind the strong lines in fashion in 
this excitement-loving age, his prose is the best of the sort 

15 in the world, and exhibits a faithful transcript of his own 
healthy, natural mind, and cheerful, innocent tone of con- 
versation.]* 

D. is delightful anywhere, but he is at the best in such 
places as these. He cares not much for Bath. He is out 

20 of his element at Buxton, at Scarborough, or Harrogate. 
The Cam and the Is is are to him ^'better than all the 
waters of Damascus."^ On the Muses' hill he is happy, 
and good, as one of the Shepherds on the Delectable 
Mountains f and when he goes about with you to show you 

25 the halls and colleges, you think you have with you the 
Interpreter of the House Beautiful.^ 

*These bracketed paragraphs were omitted froih the collected edition. 

1 II. Kings, v., 12. 

2 The Pilgrim's Progress. 



t4 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA 

CHRIST'S HOSPITAL FIVE-AND-THIRTY 
YEARS AGO. 

In Mr.. Lamb's "Works," published a year or two since, I 
find a magnificent eulogy on my old school,^ such as it was, 
or now appears to him to have been between the years 1782 
and 1789. It happens, very oddly, that my own standing 
at Christ's was nearly corresponding with his; and, with all s 
gratitude to him for his enthusiasm for the cloisters, I think 
he has contrived to bring together whatever can be said in 
praise of them, dropping all the other side of the argument 
most ingeniously. 

I remember L. at school; and can well recollect that he i< 
had some peculiar advantages, which I and others of his 
school-fellows had not. His friends lived in town, and were 
near at hand; and he had the privilege of going to see 
them, almost as often as he wished, through some invidious 
distinction, which was denied to us. The present worthy 
sub-treasurer to the Inner Temple can explain how that 
happened. He had his tea and hot rolls in the morning, 
while we were battening upon our quarter of a penny loaf — 
our crug — moistened with attenuated small beer, in wooden 
piggins, smacking of the pitched leathern jack it was poured 2( 
from. Our Monday's milk porritch, blue and tasteless, and 
the pease soup of Saturday, coarse 9,nd choking, were en- 
riched for him with a slice of "extraordinary bread and but- 
ter," from the hot-loaf of the Temple. The Wednesday's 
mess of millet, somewhat less repugnant — (we had three 2; 
banyan to four meat days in the week) — was endeared to his 
palate with a lump of double-refined, and a smack of ginger 
(to make it go down the more glibly) or the fragrant cinna- 

i "Recollections of Christ's Hospital." (L.) 



CHRIST'S HOSPITAL 65 

mon. In lieu of our half-pickled Sundays, or quite fresh 
boiled beef on Thursdays (strong as cam equina), withr de- 
testable marigolds floating in the pail to poison the broth — 
our scanty mutton crags on Friday — and rather more savory 

6 but grudging, portions of the same flesh, rotten-roasted or 
rare, on the Tuesdays (the only dish which excited our ap- 
petites, and disappointed our stomachs, in almost equal pro- 
portion) — he had his hot plate of roast veal, or the more 
tempting griskin (exotics unknown to our palates), cooked 

10 in the paternal kitchen (a great thing), and brought him 
daily by his maid or aunt! I remember the good old relative 
(in whom love forbade pride) squatting down upon some 
odd stone in a by-nook of the cloisters, disclosing the viands 
(of higher regale than those cates which the ravens minis- 

15 tered to the Tishbite) ; and the contending passions of L. at 
the unfolding. There was love for the bringer; shame for 
the thing brought, and the manner of its bringing ; sympathy 
for those who were too many to share in it; and, at top of 
all, hunger (eldest, strongest of the passions !) predominant, 

20 breaking do^Ti the stony fences of shame, and awkwardness 
and a troubling over-consciousness. 

I was a poor friendless boy. My parents, and those who 
should care for me, were far away. Those few acquaint- 
ances of theirs, which they could reckon upon being kind to 

25 me in the great city, after a little forced notice, which they 
had the grace to take of me on my first arrival in town, soon 
grew tired oi my holiday visits. They seemed to them to 
recur too often, though I thought them few enough; and, 
one after another, they all failed me, and I felt myself alone 

80 among six hundred playmates. 

O the cruelty of separating a poor lad from his early 
homestead! The yearnings which I used to have towards 



66 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA 

it in those unfledged years i How, in my dreams, would my 
native towu (far in tiie westj come back, with its Church, 
and trees, and faces ! How I would wake weeping, and in 
the anguish of my heart exclaim upon sweet Calne in 
Wiltshire! 5 

To this late, hour of my life, I trace impressions left by 
the recollection of those friendless holidays. The Ions: 
warm days of summer never return but they bring with them 
a gloom from the hauntiug memory of those whole-day- 
leaves, when, by some strange arrangement, we were turned 10 
out, for the livelong day, upon our own hands, whether we 
had friends to go to, or none. I remember those bathir.g- 
excursions to the New-River, which L. recalls with such 
relish, better, I think, than he can — for he was a home- 
seeking lad, and did not much care for such water-pastimes : is 
— How merrily we would sally forth into the fields; and 
strip under the first warmth of the sun; and wanton like 
young dace in the streams; getting us appetites for noon, 
which those of us that were penniless (our scanty morning 
crust long since exhausted) had not the means of allaying— 20 
while the cattle, and the birds, and the fishes, were at feed 
about us, and we had nothing to satisfy our cravings — the 
very beauty of the day, and the exercise of the pastime, and 
the sense of liberty, setting a keener edge upon them! — 
How faint and languid, finally, we would return, towards 25 
night-fall, to our desired morsel, half-rejoicing, half-reluc- 
tant, that the hours of our uneasy liberty had ^Apired ! 

It was worse in the days of winter, to go prowling about 
the streets objectless — shivering at cold windows of print- 
shops, to extract a little amusement; or haply, as a last so 
resort, in the hope of a little novelty, to pay a fifty-times 
repeated visit (where our individual faces should be as well . 



CHRIST'S HOSPITAL 67 

"known to the warden as those of his own charges) to the 
Lions in the Tower — to whose levee, by courtesy imme- 
morial, we had a prescriptive title to admission. 

L.'s governor (so we called the patron w^ho presented us 

5 to the foundation) lived in a manner under his paternal 
roof. Any complaint which he had to make was sure of 
being attended to. This was understood at Christ's, and 
was an effectual screen to him against the severity of 
masters, or worse tyranny of the monitors. The oppressions^ 

10 of these young brutes are heart-sickening to call to recollec- 
tion. I have been called out of my bed, and waked for the 
'purpose, in the coldest winter nights — and this not once, but 
night after night — in my shirt, to receive the discipline of a 
leathern thong, with eleven other sufferers, because it 

15 pleased my callow overseer, when there has been any talking 
heard after we were gone to bed, to make the six last beds in 
the dormitory, where the youngest children of us slept, an^ 
swerable for an offence they neither dared to commit, nor 
had the power to hinder. The same execrable tyranny 

20 drove the younger part of us from the fires, when our feet 
were perishing w^ith snow; and, under the crudest penalties, 
forbade the indulgence of a drink of water, when we lay in 
sleepless summer nights, fevered with the season, and the 
day's sports. 

25 There was one H , who, I learned, in after-days, was 

seen expiating some maturer offence in the hulks. (Do I 
flatter myself in fancying that this might be the planter of 

that name, who suffered at Nevis, I think, or St. Kits, 

some few years since? My friend Tobin was the 

30 benevolent instrument of bringing him to the gallows.) 
This petty Nero actually branded a boy, who had offended 
him, with a red-hot iron; and nearly starved forty of us, 



68 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA 

with exacting contributions, to the one half of our bread, to 
pamper a young ass, which, incredible as ifmay seem, with 
the connivance of the nurse's daughter (a young flame of 
his) he had contrived to smuggle in, and keep upon the 
leads of the ward, as they called our dormitories. This . d 
game went on for better than a week, till the foolish beast, 
not able to fare well but he must cry roast meat — happier 
than Caligula's minion, could he have kept his own counsel 
— but, foolisher, alas ! than any of his species in the fables 
—waxing fat, and kicking,^ in the fulness of bread, one lo 
unlucky minute would needs proclaim his good fortune to 
the world below; and, laying out his simple throat, blew 
such a ram's horn blast, as (toppling down the walls of his 
own Jericho)^ set concealment any longer at defiance. The 
client was dismissed, with certain attentions, to Smithfield; is 
but I never understood that the patron underwent any 
.censure on the occasion. This was in the stewardship of 
L.'s admired Perry. 

Under the same facile administration, can L. have for- 
gotten the cool impunity with which the nurses used to 20 
carry away openly, in open platters, for their own tables, 
one out of two of every hot joint', which the careful matron 
had been seeing scrupulously weighed out for our dinners? 
These things were daily practised in that magnificent apart- 
ment, which L. (grown connoisseur since; we presume) 25 
praises so highly for the grand paintings *'by Verrio, and 
others," with which it is "hung round and adorned." But 
the sight of sleek well-fed blue-coat boys in pictures was, 
at that time, I believe, little consolatory to him, or us, the 
living ones, who saw the better part of our provisions carried 3c 



1 Deuteronomy, xxxii., 15. 

2 Joshua, vi., 5. 



CHRIST'S HOSPITAL 69 

away before our faces by harpies; and ourselves reduced 
(with the Trojan in the hall of Dido) 

To feed our mind with idle portraiture.* 

L. 'has recorded the repugnance of the school to gags, or 
5 the fat of fresh beef boiled; and sets it down to some 
superstition. But these unctuous morsels are never grateful 
to young palates (children are universally fat-haters), and in 
strong, coarse, boiled meats, unsalted, are detestable. A 
gag-eater in our time was equivalent to a ghoul, and held in 
equal detestation. — — suffered under the imputation: 

• 'Twas said, 



25 



He ate strange flesh.^ 

He was observed, after dinner, carefully to gather up the 
remnants left at his table (not many, nor very choice frag- 
ments, you may credit me) — and, in an especial manner, 
these disreputable morsels, which he would convey away, 
and secretly stow in the settle that stood at his bedside. 
None saw when he ate them. It was rumored that he 
privately devoured them in the night. He was watched, 
but no traces of such midnight practices were discoverable. 
Some reported, that, on leave-days, he had been seen to 
carry out of the bounds a large blue check handkerchief, 
full of something. This then must be the accursed thing.^ 
Conjecture next was at work to imagine how he could 
dispose of it. Some said he sold it to the beggars. This 
belief generally prevailed. He went about moping. None 
spake to him. No one would play with him. He was ex- 
communicated; put out of the pale of the school. He was 



1 Dryden's Aeneid, I. 

2 Antony and Cleopatra, I., IV., 67. 

3 Joshua, vi.,'18. 



70 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA 

too powerful a boy to be beaten, but he underwent every 
mode of that negative punishment, which is more grievous 
than many stripes. Still he persevered. At length he was 
observed by two of his school-fellows, who were determined 
to get at the secret, and had traced him one leave-day for s 
that purpose, to enter a large worn-out building, such as 
there exist specimens of in Chancery Lane, which are let 
out to various scales of pauperism with open door, and a 
common staircase. After him they silently slunk in, and 
followed by stealth up four flights, and saw him tap at a lo 
poor wicket, which was opened by an aged woman, meanly 
clad. Suspicion was now ripened into certainty. The 
informers had secured their victim. They had him in their 
toils. Accusation was formally preferred, and retribution 
most signal was looked for. Mr. Hathaway, the then is 
steward, for this happened a little after my time, with that 
patient sagacity which tempered all his conduct, deter- 
mined to investigate the matter, before he proceeded to sen- 
tence. The result was, that the supposed mendicants, the 
receivers or purchasers of the mysterious scraps, turned out 20 

to be the parents of , an honest couple come to decay, — 

whom this seasonable supply had, in all probability, saved 
from mendicancy; and that this young stork, at the expense 
of his own good name, had all this while been only feeding 
the old birds ! The governors on this occasion, much to their 2s 

honor, voted a present relief to the family of , and 

presented him with a silver medal. The lesson which the 
steward read upon rash judgment, on the occasion of 

publicly delivering the medal to , I believe would not 

be lost upon his auditory. I had left school then, but I 30 

well remember . He was a tall, shambling youth, with 

^ cast in his eye, not at all calculated to conciliate hostile 



CHRIST'S HOSPITAL 71 

prejudices. I have since seen him carrying a baker's basket. 
I think I heard he did not do quite so well by himself, as he 
had done by the old folks. 

I was a Iiypochrondriac lad ; and a sight of a boy in fetters, 
5 upon the day of my first putting on the blue clothes, was 
not exactly fitted to assuage the natural terrors of initiation. 
I was of tender years, barely turned of s^ven; and had only 
read of such things in, books, or seen them but in dreams. 
I was told he had run away. This was the punishment for 

10 the first offence. As a novice I was soon after taken to see 
the dungeons. These were little, square. Bedlam cells, 
where a boy could just lie at his length upon straw and a 
blanket — a mattress, I thjnk, was afterwards substituted — 
with a peep of light, let in askance, from a prison-orifice at 

15 top, barely enough to read by. Here the poor boy was 
locked in by himself all day, without sight of any but the 
porter who brought him his bread and water — who might 
not speak to him; or of the beadle, who came twice a week to 
call him out to receive his periodical chastisement, which 

20 was almost welcome, because it separated him for a brief 
interval from solitude : — and here he was shut up by himself 
of nights, out of the reach of any sound, to suffer whatever 
horrors the weak nerves, and superstition incident to his 
time of life, might subject him to.^ This was the penalty 

^5 for the second offence. Wouldst thou like, reader, to see 
what became of him in the next degree? 

The culprit, who had been a third time an offender, and 
whose expulsion was at this time deemed irreversible, was 



1 One or two instances of lunacy, or attempted suicide, accordingly, 
at length convinced the governors of the impolicy of this part of the 
sentence, and the midnight torture to the spirits was dispensed with. 
Ihis fancy of dungeons for children was a sprout of Howard's brain- 
for which (saving the reverence due to Holy Paul), methinks. I could 
wilhngly spit upon his statue. (L.) 



72 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA 

brought forth, as at some solemn auto da fe, arrayed in 
uncouth and most appalling attire — all trace of his late 
"watchet weeds''^ carefully effaced, he was exposed in a 
jacket, resembling those which London lamplighters for- 
merly delighted in, with a cap of the same. The effect of s 
this divestiture was such as the ingenious devisers of it 
could have anticipated. With his pale and frighted fea- 
tures, it was as if some of those disfigurements in Dante had 
seized upon him. In this disguisement he was brought 
into the hall {LJs favorite state-room) where awaited him iq 
the whole number of his school-fellows, whose joint lessons 
and sports he was thenceforth to share no more ; the awful 
presence of the steward, to be seen for the last time; of the 
executioner beadle, clad in his state robe for the occasion ; 
and of two faces more, of direr import, because never but is 
in these extremities visible. These were governors; two 
of whom, by choice, or charter, were always accustomed 
to officiate at these Ultima Supplicia; not to mitigate 
(so at least we understood it), but to enforce the uttermost 
stripe. Old Bamber Gascoigne, and Peter Aubert, I 20 
remember, were colleagues on one occasion, when the 
beadle turning rather pale, a glass of brandy was ordered 
to prepare him for the mysteries. The scourging was, a,fter 
the old Roman fashion, long and stately. The lictor 
accompanied the criminal quite round the hall. We were 25 
generally too faint with attending to the previous disgusting 
circumstances to make accurate report with our eyes of 
the degree of corporal suffering inflicted. Report, of course, 
gave out the back knotty and livid. After scourging, he 
was made over, in his Sa7i Benito, to his friends, if he had so 
any (but commonly such poor runagates were friendless), 

1 Collins's Ode on the Manneks: Drayton, Polyolbion, Song v., 13- 



CHRIST'S HOSPITAL 73 

or to his parish officer, who, to enhance the effect of the 
;scene, had his station allotted to him on the outside of the 
hall gate. 

These solemn pageantries were not played off so often as 

5 to spoil the general mirth of the community. We had 
plenty of exercise and recreation after school hours; and, 
for myself, I must confess, that I was never happier, than 
in them. The Upper and the Lower Grammar Schools 
were held in the same room; and an imaginary line only 

10 divided their bounds. Their character was as different as 
that of the inhabitants on the two sides of the Pyrenees. 
The Rev. James Boyer was the Upper Master; but the 
Rev. Matthew Field presided over that portion of the 
apartment of which I had the good fortune to be a member. 

15 We lived a life as careless as birds. We talked and did just 
what we pleased, and nobody molested us. We carried an 
accidence, or a grammar, for form; but, for any trouble it 
gave us, we might take two years in getting through the 
verbs deponent, and another two in forgetting all that 

20 we had learned about them. There was now and then the 
formality of saying a lesson, but if you had not learned it, a 
brush across the shoulders (just enough to disturb a fly) was 
the sole remonstrance. Field never used the rod; and in 
truth he wielded the cane with no great good-will — holding 

:!5 it ''like a dancer."^ It looked in his hands rather like an 
emblem, than an instrument of authority; and an emblem, 
too, he was ashamed of. He was a good, easy man, that 
did not care to ruffle his own peace, nor perhaps set any 
great consideration upon the value of juvenile time. He 

30 came among us, now and then, but often stayed away 
whole davs from us; and when he came, it made no dif- 



1 Antony and Cleopatra, III., xi., 36. 



74 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA 



iBHI 



ference to us — he had his private room to retire to, the 
short time he stayed, to be out of the sound of our noise. 
Our mirth and uproar went on. We had classics of our 
own, without being beholden to "insolent Greece or 
haughty Rome,"i that passed current among us — Peter a 
Wilkins — the Adventures of the Hon. Capt. Robert Boyle 
— the Fortunate Blue Coat Boy — and the like. Or we 
cultivated a turn for mechanic or scientific operations; 
making little sim -dials of paper; or weaving those ingenious 
parentheses, called cat-cradles; or making dry peas to dance lo 
upon the end of a tin pipe; or studying the art military 
over that laudable game "French and English," and a 
hundred other such devices to pass away the time — mix- 
ing the useful with the agreeable — as would have made the 
souls of Rousseau and John Locke chuckle to have seen us. 15 

Matthew Field belonged to that class of modest divines 
who affect to mix in equal proportion the gentleman, the 
scholar, and the Christian; but, I know not how, the first 
ingredient is generally found to be the predominating dose 
in the composition. He was engaged in gay parties, or with 20 
his courtly bow at some episcopal levee, when he should 
have been attending upon us. He had for many years the 
classical charge of a hundred children, during the four or 
five first years of their education; and his very highest 
form seldom proceeded further than two or three of the 25 
introductory fables of Phsedrus. How things were suffered 
to go on thus, I cannot guess. Boyer, who was the proper 
person to have remedied these abuses, always affected, 
perhaps felt, a delicacy in interfering in a province not 
strictly his own. I have not been without my suspicions, so 

1 Ben Jonson, Lines to the Memory of William Shakespeare's 
Works. 



CHRIST'S HOSPITAL 75 

that he was not altogether displeased at the contrast we 
presented to his end of the school. We were a sort of 
Helots to his young Spartans. He would sometimes, with 
ironic deference, send to borrow a rod of the Under Master, 

5 and then, with sardonic grin, observe to one of his upper 
boys, ''how neat and fresh the twigs looked." While his 
pale students were battering their brains over Xenophon 
and Plato, with a silence as deep as that enjoined by the 
Samite, we were enjoying ourselves at our ease in our little 

10 Goshen. We saw a little into the secrets of his discipline, 
and the prospect did but the more [reconcile us to our lot. 
His thunders rolled innocuous for us; his storms came 
near, but never touched us ; contrary to Gideon's miracle,^ 
while all around were drenched, our fleece was dry.^ His 

15 boys turned out the better scholars; we, I suspect, have 
the advantage in temper. His pupils cannot speak of him 
without something of terror allaying their gratitude; the 
remembrance of 'Field conies back with all the soothing 
images of indolence, and summer slumbers, and work like 

20 play, and innocent idleness, and Elysian exemptions, and 
life itself, a ^'playing holiday."^ 

Though sufficiently removed from the jurisdiction of 
Boyer, we were near enough (as I have said) to understand 
a little of his system. We occasionally heard sounds of the 

25 Ululantes, and caught glances of Tartarus. B. was a 
rabid pedant. His English style was cramped to barbarism. 
His Easter anthems (for his duty obliged him to those 
periodical flights) were grating as scrannel pipes.'^ He 



1 Judges, vi., 36-40. 

2 Cowley. (L.) . 

3 I. Henry IV., I. ii., 227. , . ^. ,- ^ 

4 In this and everything B. was the antipodes of his coadjutor. 
Wliile the former was digging his brains for crude a nthems, worth a 



76 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA ■ 

would laugh, ay, and heartily, but then it must be at 

Flaccus's quibble about Rex or at the tristis severitas 

in vultu, or inspicere in patinas, of Terence — thin jests, 
which at their first broaching cculd hardly have had vis 
enough to move a Roman muscle. He had two wigs, both 5 
pedantic, but of different omen. The one serene, smiling, 
fresh powdered, betokening a mild day. The other, an old 
discolored, unkempt, angry caxon, denoting frequent and 
bloody execution. Woe to the school, when he made his 
morning appearance in his passy, or passionate wig. No 10 
comet expounded surer. J. B. had a he*avy hand. I have 
known him double his knotty fist at a poor trembling' 
child (the maternal milk hardly dry upon its lips) with a 
"Sirrah, do you presume to set your wits at me ?" Nothing 
was more common than to see him make a headlong entry 15 
into the school-room, from his inner recess, or library, and, 
with turbulent eyes, singling out a lad, roar out, *'Od's my 
life, sirrah" (his favorite adjuration), "I have a great mind 
to whip you," — then, with as sudden a retracting impulse, 
fling back into his lair — and after a cooling lapse of some 20 
minutes (during which all but the culprit had totally for- 
gotten the context) drive headlong out again, piecing out 
his imperfect sense, as if it had been some Devil's Litany, 
with the expletory yell — "and I will, too." In his gentler 
moods, when the rahidus furor was assuaged, he had resort 25 
to an ingenious method, peculiar, for what I have heard, to 
himself, of whipping the boy, and reading the Debates, at 
the same time ; a paragraph, and a lash between ; which in 



pig-mit, F. would be recreating his gentlemanly fancy in the more 
flowery v/alks of the Muses. A Uttle dramatic effusion of liis, imder the 
name of \' ertumnus and Pomona, is not yet forgotten by the chroniclers 
of that sort of literature. It was accepted by Garrick, but the town 
did not give it their sanction. B. used to say of it, in a way of half- 
compliment, half-irony, that it was too classical for representation. (L.) 



'x; 



CHRIST'S HOSPITAL 77" 

those times, when parHamentary oratory was most at a 
height and flourishing in these realms, was not calculated to 
impress the patient with a veneration for the diffuser graces 
of rhetoric. 

Once, and but once, the uplifted rod was known to fail 

ineffectual from his hand — ^when droll squinting W , 

having been caught putting the inside of the master's desk 
to a use for which the architect had clearly not designed 
it, to justify himself, with great simplicity averred, that he 
did not know that the thing had been forewarned. This 
exquisite irrecognition of any law antecedent to the oral or 
declaratory, struck so irresistibly upon the fancy of all who 
heard it (the pedagogue himself not excepted) that remis- 
sion was unavoidable. 

'15 L. has given credit to B.'s great merits as an instructor. 
Coleridge, in his literary life, has pronounced a more 
intelligible and ample encomium on them. The author of 
the Country Spectator doubts not to compare him with the 
ablest teachers of antiquity. Perhaps we cannot dismiss 

'20 him better than with the pious ejaculation of C when he 

heard that his old master was on his death-bed — "Poor 
J. B. — may all his faults be forgiven; and may he be wafted 
to bliss by little cherub boys, all head and wings, with no 
bottoms to reproach his sublunary infirmities." 

'25 Under him were many good and sound scholars bred. 
First Grecian of my time was Lancelot Pepys Stevens, 
kindest of boys and men, since Co-grammar-master (and 
inseparable companion) with Dr. T — e. What an edify- 
ing spectacle did this brace of friends present to those who 

30 remembered the anti-socialities of their predecessors ! You 
never met the one by chance in the street without a wonder, 
which was quickly dissipated by the almost immediate sub- 



78 THE ESSAYS OF. ELIA 

appearance of the other. Generally arm In arm, these 
kindly coadjutors lightened for each other the toilsome 
duties of their profession, and when, in advanced age, one 
foimd it convenient to retire, the other was not long in 
discovering that it suited him to lay down the fasces g,lso. -s: 
Oh, it is pleasant, as it is rare, to find the same arm linked 
in yours at forty, which at thirteen helped it to turn over 
the Cicero De Amicitia, or some tale of Antique Friendship, 
which the young heart even then was burning to anticipate 1 
Co-Grecian with S. was Th — , who has since executed with lo 
ability various diplomatic functions at the Northern courts. 
Th — was a tall, dark, saturnine youth, sparing of speech, 
with raven locks. Thomas Fanshaw Middle ton followed 
him (now Bishop of Calcutta), a scholar and a gentle- 
man in his teens. He has the reputation of an excellent i-^ 
critic; and is author (besides the Country Spectator) of a 
Treatise on the Greek Article, against Sharpe. M. is said 
to bear his mitre high in India, where the regni novitas (I 
dare say) sufficiently justifies the bearing. A humility quite 
as primitive as that of Jewel or Hooker might not be 20 
exactly fitted to impress the minds of those Anglo-Asiatic 
diocesans with a reverence for home institutions, and the 
church which those fathers watered.^ The manners of M. 
at school, though firm, were mild, and unassuming. Next 
to M. (if not senior to him) was Richards, author of the 25 
Aboriginal Britons, the most spirited of the Oxford Prize 
Poems; a pale, studious Grecian. Then followed poor 
S , ill-fated M ! of these the Muse is silent. 

Finding some of Edward's race 
Unhappy, pass their annals by.^ 30 

1 I. Corinthians, iii., 6-8. ' 

2 Prior's Carmen Seculare, 1700, adapted. 



CHRIST'S HOSPITAL 79 

Come back into memory, like as thou wert in the day- 
spring of thy fancies, with hope hke a fiery column before 
thee — the dark pillar not yet turned — Samuel Taylor 
Coleridge — Logician, Metaphysician, Bard! — How have I 

5 seen the casual passer through the Cloisters stand still, 
entranced with admiration (while he weighed the dispro- 
portion between the speech and the garb of the young 
Mirandula), to hear thee unfold, in thy deep and sweet 
intonations, the mysteries of Jamblichus, or Plotinus (for 

10 even in those years thou waxedst not pale at such philo- 
sophic draughts), or reciting Homer in his Greek, or Pindar, 
while the walls of the old Grey Friars re-echoed to the 
accents of the inspired charity-boy! — Many were the "wit- 
combats" (to dally awhile with the words of old Fuller) 

15 between him and C. V. Le G^ , "which two I behold 

like a Spanish great galleon, and an English man-of-war; 
Master Coleridge, like the former, was built far higher in 
learning, solid, but slow in his performances. C. V. L., 
with the English man-of-war, lesser in bulk, but lighter in 

20 sailing, could turn with all tides, tack about, and take 
advantage of all winds, by the quickness of his wit and 
invention."^ 

Nor shalt thou, their compeer, be quickly forgotten, 
Allen, with the cordial smile, and still more cordial laugh, 

25 with which thou wert wont to make the old Cloisters shake, 
in thy cognition of some poignant jest of theirs; or the 
anticipation of some more material, and, peradventure, 
practical one, of thine own. Extinct are those smiles, with 
that beautiful countenance, with which (for thou wert the 

30 Nireus formosus of the school), in the days of thy maturer 
waggery, thou didst disarm the wrath of infuriated town- 

1 Fuller's Worthies, adapted. 



80 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA 

damsel, who, incensed by provoking pinch, turning tigress- 
like round, suddenly converted by thy angel-look, exchanged 

the half-formed terrible "bl ," for a gentler greeting — 

''bless thy handsome face!'* 

Next follow two, who ought to be now alive, and the 5 

friends of Elia— the junior Le G- and F ; who 

impelled, the foriiier by a roving temper, the latter by too 
quick a sense of neglect — ill capable of enduring the slights 
poor Sizars are sometimes subject to in our seats of learning 
— exchanged their Alma Mater for the camp; perishing one io> 
by climate, and one on the plains of Salamanca: — Le 

G , sanguine, volatile, sweet-natured; F , dogged, 

faithful, anticipative of insult, warm-hearted, with some- 
thing of the old Roman height about him. 

Fine, frank-hearted Fr , the present master of Hert- 15 

ford, with Marmaduke T , mildest of Missionaries — 

and both my good friends still — close the catalogue of 
Grecians in my time. 

THE TWO RACES OF MEN. 

The human species, according to the best theory I can 
form of it, is composed of two distinct races, the men who 20 
borrow, and the men who lend. To these two original 
diversities may be reduced all those impertinent classifi- 
cations of Gothic and Celtic tribes, white men, black men, 
red men. All the dwellers upon earth, "Parthians, and 
Medes, and Elamites,"^ flock hither, and do naturally fall 25 
in with one or other of these primary distinctions. The 
infinite superiority of the former, which I choose to desig- 
nate as the great race, is discernible in their figure, port, and 
a certain instinctive sovereignty. The latter are bom 

1 I. Acts, ii., 9. , 



THE TWO RACES OF MEN 81 

degraded. "He shall serve his brethren."^ There is some- 
thing in the air of one of this cast, lean and suspicious; 
contrasting with the open, trusting, generous manners of 
the other. 

5 Observe who have been the greatest borrowers of all 

ages — ^Alcibiades — Falstaff — Sir Richard Steele — our late 

incomparable Brinsley — what a family likeness in all four! 

What a careless, even deportment hath your borrower I 

what rosy gills I what a beautiful reliance on Providence 

10 doth he manifest, — taking no more thought than lilies P 
What contempt for money, — accounting it (yours and mine 
especially) no better than dross ! What a liberal confound- 
ing of those pedantic distinctions of meum and tuum! or 
rather, what a noble simplification of language (beyond 

15 Tooke), resolving these supposed opposites into one clear, 
intelligible pronoun adjective ! — ^^^'^hat near approaches doth 
he make to the primitive community, — to the extent of one- 
half of the principle at least! — 

He is the true taxer "who calleth all the world up to be 

20 taxed ;"^ and the distance is as vast between him and one of 
uSy as subsisted betwixt the Augustan Majesty and the 
poorest obolary Jew that paid it tribute-pittance at Jerusa- 
lem! — His exactions, too, have such a cheerful, voluntary 
air! So far removed from your sour parochial or state- 

25 gatherers, — those ink-horn varlets, who carry their want of 
welcome in their faces ! He cometh to you with a smile and 
trouble th you with no receipt; confining himself to no set 
season. Every day is his Candlemas, or his Feast of Holy 
Michael. He applieth the lene tormentum of a pleasant 

30 look to your purse, — ^^vhich to that gentle warmth expands 

1 Genesis, ix., 25. 

2 Matthew, vi,, 28. 

3 Luke, ii., 1. 



82 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA 

her silken leaves, as naturally as the cloak of the traveller^ 
for which sun and wind contended! He is the true Pro- 
p,ontic which never ebbethP The sea which taketh hand- 
somely at each man's hand. In vain the victim, whom he 
delighteth to honor,^ struggles with destiny; he is in the 6 
net. Lend therefore cheerfully, O man ordained to lend — 
that thou lose not in the end, with thy worldly penny, the 
reversion promised.^ Combine not preposterously in thine 
own person the penalties of Lazarus and of Dives!"* — but, 
when thou seest the proper authority coming, meet it smil- lo 
ingly, as it were half-way. Come, a handsome sacrifice! 
See how light he makes of it ! Strain not courtesies with a 
noble enemy. 

Reflections like the foregoing, were forced upon my mind 
by the death of my old friend, Ralph Bigod, Esq., who is 
departed this life on Wednesday evening ; dying, as he had 
lived, without much trouble. He boasted himself a de- 
scendant from mighty ancestors of that name, who hereto^- 
fore held ducal dignities in this realm. In his actions and 
sentiments he belied not the stock to which he pretended. 20 
Early in life he found himself invested with ample revenues ; 
which with that noble disinterestedness which I have 
noticed as inherent in men of the great race, he took almost 
immediate measures entirely to dissipate and bring to 
nothing: for there is something revolting in the idea of a ^^ 
king holding a private purse; and the thoughts of Bigod 
were all regal. Thus furnished by the very act of dis- 
fumishment; getting rid of the cumbersome luggage of 
riches, more apt (as one sings) 

1 Othello, III., iii., 453 (misquoted). 

2 Esther, vi., 6. 

3 Proverbs, xix., 17. 

4 Luke, xvi., 19fl. 



THE TWO RACES OF MEN 83 

To slacken virtue, and abate her edge, 

Than prompt her to do aught may merit praise,^ 

he set forth, like some Alexander, upon his great enterprise, 
"borrowing and to borrow/'^ 

5 In his periegesis, or triumphant progress throughout this 
island, it has been calculated that he laid a tythe part of the 
inhabitants under contribution. I reject this estimate as 
greatly exaggerated; but having had the honor of accom- 
panying my friend, divers times, in his perambulations 

10 about this vast city, I own I was greatly struck at first with 
the prodigious number of faces we met, who claimed a sort 
of respectful acquaintance with us. He was one day so 
obliging as to explain the phenomenon. It seems, these 
were his tributaries; feeders of his exchequer; gentlemen, 

15 his good friends (as he was pleased to express himself), 
to whom he had occasionally been beholden for a loan. 
Their multitudes did no way disconcert him. He rather 
took a pride in numbering them; and, with Comus, seemed 
pleased to be "stocked with so fair a herd.''^ 

20 With such sources, it was a wonder how he contrived to 
keep his treasury always empty. He did it by force of an 
aphorism, which he had often in his mouth, that "money 
kept longer than three days stinks." So he made use of 
it while it was fresh. A good part he drank away (for he 

is was an excellent toss-pot), some he gave away, the rest he 
threw away, literally tossing and hurling it violently from 
him — as boys do burrs, or as if it had been infectious, — 
into ponds, or ditches, or deep holes, — inscrutable cavities 
af the earth: — or he would bury it (where he would never 

'0 seek it again) by a river's side under some bank, which (he 

1 Paradise Regained, II., 455. 

2 Revelation, vi., 2, adapted. 

3 Comus, 1. 151. 



84 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA 

would facetiously observe) paid no interest — but out away 
from him it must go peremptorily, as Hagar's offspring into 
the wilderness,* while it was sweet. He never missed it. 
The streams were perennial which fed his fisc. When new 
supplies became necessary, the first person that had the « 
felicity to fall in with him, friend or stranger, was sure to 
contribute to the deficiency. For Bigod had an undeniable 
way with him. He had a cheerful, open exterior, a quick 
jovial eye, a bald forehead, just touched with grey (cana 
fides). He anticipated no excuse, and found none. And, lo 
waving for a while my theory as to the great race, I would 
put it to the most untheorizing reader, who may at times 
have disposable coin in his pocket, whether it is not more 
repugnant to the kindliness of his nature to refuse such 
a one as I am describing, than to say no to a poor petitionary i5 
rogue (your bastard borrower), who, by his mumping vis- 
nomy, tells you, that he expects nothing better; and there- 
fore, whose preconceived notions and expectations you do 
in reality so much less shock in the refusal. 

When I think of this man; his fiery glow of heart; his 20 
swell of feeling; how magnificent, how ideal he was; how 
great at the midnight hour; and when I compare with him 
the companions with whom I have associated since, I 
grudge the saving of a few idle ducats, and think that I am 
fallen into the society of lenders, and little men, 25 

To one like Elia, whose treasures are rather cased in 
leather covers than closed in iron coffers, there is a class of 
alienators more formidable than that which I have touched 
upon; I mean your borrowers of books — those mutilators 
of collections, spoilers of the symmetry of shelves, and ^o 

1 Genesis, xxi. 



THE TWO RACES OF MEN 85 

creators of odd volumes. There is Comberbatch, matchless 
in his depredations! 

That foul gap in the bottom shelf facing you, like a great 
eye-tooth knocked out — (you are now with me in my little 

5 back study in Bloomsbury, reader!) —with the huge 

Switzer-like tomes on each side (like the Guildhall giants, 
in their reformed posture, guardant of nothing) once held 
the tallest of my folios, Opera Bonaventiiroe , choice and 
massy divinity, to which its two supporters (school divinity 

10 alsojbut of a lesser calibre, — Bellarmine,and Holy Thomas) 
showed but as dwarfs, itself an Ascapart! — that Comber- 
batch abstracted upon the faith of a theory he holds, which 
is more easy, I confess, for me to suffer by than to refute, 
• namely, that "the title to property in a book" (my Bona- 

15 venture, for instance) "is in exact ratio to the claimant's 
powers of understanding and appreciating the same/' 
Should he go on acting upon this theory, which of our 
shelves is safe? 

The slight vacuum in the left-hand case — two shelves 

20 from the ceiling — ^scarcely distinguishable but by the quick 

eye of a loser ^was whilom the commodious resting-place 

of Browne on Urn Burial. C. will hardly allege that he 
knows more about that treatise than I do, who introduced it 
to him, and was indeed the first (of the modems) to discover 

25 its beauties — but so have I known a foolish lover to praise 
his mistress in the presence of a rival more qualified to carry 
her off than himself. — Just below, Dodsley's dramas want 
their fourth volume, where Vittoria Corombona is! The 
remainder nine are as distasteful as Priam's refuse sons, 

30 where the fates borrowed Hector. Here stood the Anatomy 
of Melancholy, in sober state. — ^There loitered the Com- 
plete Angler; quiel as in life, by some stream side. — In 



86 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA 

yonder nook, John Buncle, a widower-volume, with "eyes 
closed," moums his ravished mate. 

One justice I must do my friend, that if he sometimes, 
like the sea, sweeps away a treasure, at another time, sea- 
like, he throws up as rich an equivalent to match it. I s 
have a small under-collection of this nature (my friend's 
gatherings in his various calls), picked up, he has forgotten 
at what odd places, and deposited with as little memory as 
mine. I take in these orphans, the twice-deserted. These 
proselytes of the gate are welcome as the true Hebrews, lo 
There they stand in conjunction; natives, and naturalised. 
The latter seem as little disposed to inquire out their true 
lineage as I am. — I charge no warehouse-room for these 
deodands, nor shall ever put myself to the ungentlemanly • 
trouble of advertising a sale of them to pay expenses. 15 

To lose a volume to C. carries some sense and meaning 
in it. You are sure that he will make one hearty meal on 
your viands, if he can give no account of the platter after it. 
But what moved thee, wayward, spiteful K., to be t^o im- 
portunate to carry off with thee, in spite of tears and ad- 20 
jurations to thee to forbear, the Letters of that princely 
woman, the thrice noble Margaret Newcastle? — knowing at 
the time, and knowing that I knew also, thou most assuredly 
wouldst never turn over one leaf of the illustrious folio : — 
what but the mere spirit of contradiction, and childish love 25 
of getting the better of thy friend? — Then, worst cut of all ! '■ 
to transport it with thee to the Gallican land — 

Unworthy land to harbor such a sweetness, 
A virtue in which all ennobling thoughts dwelt, I 

Pure thoughts, kind thoughts, high thoughts, her sex's 30 j 
wonder! 

hadst thou not thy play-books, and books of jests and ! 



NEW YEAR'S EVE 87 

fancies, about thee, to keep thee merry, even as thou keep- 
est all companies with thy quips and mirthful tales? — Child 
of the Green-room, it was unkindly done of thee. Thy 
wife, too, that part-French, better part Englishwoman! — 
5 that she could fix upon no other treatise to bear away, in 
kindly token of remembering us, than the works of Fulke 
Greville, Lord Brook — of which no Frenchman, nor woman 
of France, Italy, or England, was ever by nature constituted 
to comprehend a tittle! Was there not Zimmerman on 

10 Solitiidef 

Reader, if haply thou art blessed with a moderate collec- 
tion, be shy of showing it; or if thy heart overfloweth to 
lend them, lend thy books; but let it be to such a one as 
S. T. C. — he will return them (generally anticipating the 

15 time appointed) with usury; enriched with annotations, 
tripling their value. I have had experience. Many are 
these precious MSS. of his — (in matter oftentimes, and 
almost in quantity not unfrequently, vying with the originals) 
— in no very clerkly hand — legible in my Daniel; in old 

20 Burton; in Sir Thomas Browne; and those abstruser 
cogitations of the Greville, now alas ! wandering in Pagan 

lands. 1 counsel thee, shut not thy heart, nor thy 

library, against S. T. C. 

NEW YEAR'S EVE. ■ 

Every man hath two birthdays : two days, at least, in every 
55 year, which set him upon revolving the lapse of time, as it 

affects his mortal duration. The one is that which in an 
^ especial manner he termeth his. In the gradual desuetude 

of old observances, this custom of solemnising our proper 

birthday hath nearly passed away, or is left to children, 



88 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA 

who reflect nothing at all about the matter, nor understand 
anything in it beyond cake and orange. But the birth of 
a New Year is of an interest too wide to be pretermitted 
by king or cobbler. No one ever regarded the First of 
January with indifference. It is that from which all date s 
their time, and count upon what is left. It is the nativity 
of our common Adam. 

Of all sound of all bells — (bells, the music nighest border- 
ing upon heaven) — most solemn and touching is the peal 
whicu rings out the Old Year. I never hear it without a lo 
gathering-up of my mind to a concentration of all the 
images that have been diffused over the past twelvemonth ; 
all I have done or suffered, performed or neglected — in that 
regretted time. I begin to know its worth, as when a 
person dies. It takes a personal color; nor was it a poetical is 
flight in a contemporary, when he exclaimed 

I saw the skirts of the departing Year.^ 

It is no more than what in sober sadness every one of us 
seems to be conscious of, in that awful leave-taking. I am 
sure I felt it, and all felt it with me, last night; though some 20 
of my companions affected rather to manifest an exhilara- 
tion at the birth of the coming year, than any very tender 
regrets for the decease of its predecessor. But I am none 
of those who 

Welcome the coming, speed the parting guest. ^ 25 

I am naturally, beforehand, shy of novelties ; new books, 
new faces,newyears, — from some mental twist which makes 
it difficult in me to face the prospective. I have almost 
ceased to hope; and am sanguine only in the prospects of 

1 Coleridge's Departing Year. 

2 Pope's Odyssey, XV., 89. 



NEW YEAR'S EVE 89 

other (former) years. I plunge into foregone visions and 
conclusions. I encounter pell-mell with past disappoint- 
ments. I am armor-proof against old discouragements. 
I forgive, or overcome in fancy, old adversaries. I play over 

5 again for love, as the gamesters phrase it, games, for which 
I once paid so dear. I would scarce now have any of those 
untoward accidents and events of my life reversed. I would 
no more alter them than the incidents of some well-con- 
trived novel. Me thinks, it is better that I should have pined 

10 away seven of my goldenest years, when I was thrall to the 
fair hair, and fairer eyes, of Alice W — ^n, than that so 
passionate a love-adventure should be lost. It was better 
that our family should have missed that legacy, which old 
Dorrell cheated us of, than that I should have at this 

15 moment two thousand pounds in banco, and be without 
the idea of that specious old rogue. 

In a degree beneath manhood, it is my infirmity to look 
back upon those early days. Do I advance a paradox, when 
I say that, skipping over the intervention of forty years, a 

20 man may have leave to love himself, without the imputation 
of self-love? 

If I know aught of myself, no one whose mind is intro- 
spective — and mine is painfully so — can have a less respect 
for his present identity, than I have for the man Elia. I 

25 know him to be light, and vain, and humorsome; a notori- 
ous . . .; addicted to . . .; averse from counsel, 
neither taking it, nor offering it;— . . besides ; a stam- 
mering buffoon; what you will; lay it on, and spare not; I 
subscribe to it all, and much more, than thou canst be 

30 willing to lay at his door but for the child Elia — that 

*'other me," there, in the background — I must take leave 
to cherish the remembrance of that young master — ^with as 



90 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA 

little reference, I protest, to this stupid changeling of five- 
and-forty, as if it had been a child of some other house, and 
not of my parents. I can cry over its patient small-pox at 
five, and rougher medicaments. I can lay its poor fevered 
head upon the sick pillow at Christ's, and wake with it in s 
surprise at the gentle posture of maternal tenderness hang- • 
ing over it, that unknown had watched its sleep. I know 
how it shrank from any the least color of falsehood.- — God 
help thee, Elia, how thou art changed! Thou art sophis- 
ticated.^ — I know how honest, how courageous (for a weak- lo 
ling) it was — ^how religious, how imaginative, how hopeful! 
From what have I not fallen, if the child I remember was 
indeed myself, — and not some dissembling guardian, pre- 
senting a false identity, to give the rule to my unpractised 
steps, and regulate the tone of my moral being! is 

That I am fond of indulging, beyond a hope of sympathy, 
in such retrospection, may be the symptom of some sickly 
idiosyncrasy. Or is it owing to another cause ; simply, that 
being without wife or family, I have not learned to project 
myself enough out of myself; and having no offspring of 20 
my own to dally with, I turn back upon memory and adopt 
my own early idea, as my heir and favorite? If these 
speculations seem fantastical to thee, reader — (a busy man, 
perchance), if I tread out of the way of thy sympathy, and 
am singularly conceited only, I retire, impenetrable to 25 
ridicule, under the phantom cloud of Elia. 

The elders, with whom I was brought up, were of a 
character not likely to let slip the sacred observance of any 
old institution; and the ringing out of the Old Year was 
kept by them with circumstances of peculiar ceremony. — In so 
those days the sound of those midnight chimes, though it 

1 Midsummer Night's Dream, III., i., 121. 



NEW YEAR'S EVE 91 

seemed to raise hilarity in all around me, never failed to 
bring a train of pensive imagery into my fancy. Yet I then 
scarce conceived what it meant, or thought of it as a 
reckoning that concerned me. Not childhood alone, but 

5 the 3'oung man till thirty, never feels practically that he is 
mortal. He knows it indeed, and, if need were, he could 
preach a homily on the fragility of life ; but he brings it not 
home to himself, any more than in a hot June we can 
appropriate to our imagination the freezing days of Decem- 

10 ber. But now, shall I confess a truth? — :I feel these audits 
but too powerfully. I begin to count the probabilities of 
my duration, and to grudge at the expenditure of moments 
and shortest periods, like miser's farthings. In proportion 
as the years both lessen and shorten, I set more count 

i,i5 upon their periods and would fain lay my ineffectual fingei 
upon the spoke of the great wheel. I am not content to 
pass away *'like a weaver's shuttle."^ Those metaphors 
solace me not, nor sweeten the unpalatable draught of 
mortality. I care not to be carried with the tide, that 

(120 smoothly bears human life to eternity; and reluct at the 
inevitable course of destiny. I am in love with this green 
earth; the face of town and country; the unspeakable rural 
solitudes, and the sweet security of streets. I would set up 
my tabernacle here. I am content to stand still at the age 

(525 to which I am arrived ; I, and my friends : to be no younger, 
no richer, no handsomer. I do not want to be weaned 
by age; or drop, like mellow fruit, as they say, into the 
grave. — ^Any alteration, on this earth of mine, in diet or 
in lodging, puzzles and discomposes me. My household 

JO gods plant a terrible fixed foot, and are not rooted up with- 

1 Job, vii., 6. 



92 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA 

out blood. They do not willingly seek Lavinian shores. 
A new state of being staggers me. 

Sun, and sky, and breeze, and solitary walks, and summer 
holidays, and the greenness of fields, and the delicious 
juices of meats and fishes, and society, and the cheerful 5 
glass, and candle-light, and fireside conversations, and 
innocent vanities, and jests, and irony itself — do these things 
go out with life? 

Can a ghost laugh, or shake his gaunt sides, when you are 
pleasant with him? 10 

And you, my midnight darlings, my Folios ! must I part 
with the intense delight of having you (huge armfuls) in my 
embraces? Must knowledge come to me, if it come at all, 
by some awkward experiment of intuition, and no longer by 
this familiar process of reading? is 

Shall I enjoy friendships there, wanting the smiling indi- 
cations which point me to them here, — the recognisable 
face — the "sweet assurance of a look?"* — 

In winter this intolerable disinclination to dying — to give 
it its mildest name — does more especially haunt and beset 20 
me. In a genial August noon, beneath a sweltering sky. 
death is almost problematic. At those times do such poor 
snakes as myself enjoy an immortality. Then we expand 
and burgeon. Then are \ve as strong again, as valiant 
again, as wise again, and a great deal taller. The blast that 25 
nips and shrinks me, puts me in thoughts of death. All 
things allied to the insubstantial, wait upon that master 
feeling; cold, numbness, dreams, perplexity; moonlight 
itself, with its shadowy and spectral appearances, — that cold 
ghost of the sun, or Phoebus' sickly sister, like that in- 30 

1 Roydon's Elegy on Sir Philip Sidney. 



NEW YEAR'S EVE 93 

nutritious one denounced in the Canticles: — I am none 
of her minions — I hold with the Persian. 

Whatsoever thwarts, or puts me out of my way, brings 
death into my mind. All partial evils, like humors, run 

5 into that capital plague-sore.— I have heard some profess 
an indifference to life. Such hail the end of their existence 
as a port of refuge : and speak of the grave as of some soft 
arms, in which they may slumber as on a pillow. Some 
have wooed death but out upon thee, I say, thou foul, 

10 ugly phantom! I detest, abhor, execrate, and (with Friar 
John) give thee to six-score thousand devils, as in no 
instance to be excused or tolerated, but shunned as a 
universal viper; to be branded, proscribed, and spoken evil 
of! In no way can I be brought to digest thee, thou thin, 

15 melancholy Privation, or more frightful and confounding 
Positive! 

Those antidotes, prescribed against the fear of thee, are 
altogether frigid and insulting, like thyself. For what satis- 
faction hath a man, that he shall "lie down with kings and 

20 emperors in death, "who in his lifetime never greatly coveted 
the society of such bedfellows ?— or, forsooth, that "so 
shall the fairest face appear ?"i— why, to comfort me, must 
Alice W— n be a goblin? More than all, I conceive dis- 
gust at those impertinent and misbecoming familiarities, 

25 inscribed upon your ordinary tombstones. Every dead 
man must take upon himself to be lecturing me with his 
odious truism, that "such as he now is, I must shortly be." 
Not so shortly, friend, perhaps as thou imaginest. In the 
meantime I am alive. I move about. I am worth twenty 

30 of thee. Know thy betters! Thy New Years' Days are 
past. I survive, a jolly candidate for 1821. Another cup 
1 William AND Margaret, by David Mallet (Lucas). 



94 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA 

of wine — and while that turn-coat bell, that just now mourn- 
fully chanted the obsequies of 1820 departed, with changed 
notes lustily rings in a successor, let us attune to its peal the 
song made on a like occasion, by hearty, cheerful Mr. 
Cotton. 5 

THE NEW YEAR. 

Hark! the cock crows, and yon bright star 

Tells us the day himself's not far; 

And see where, breaking from the night, 

He gilds the western hills with light. 

With him old Janus doth appear, ic 

Peeping into the future year. 

With such a look as seems to say. 

The prospect is not good that way. 

Thus do we rise ill sights to see, 

And 'gainst ourselves to prophesy; 15 

When the prophetic fear of things 

A more tormenting mischief brings, 

More full of soul-tormenting gall, 

Than direct mischiefs can befall. 

But stay! but stay! methinks my sight, 2c 

Better inform'd by clearer sight, 

Discerns sereneness in that brow, 

That all contracted seem'd but now. 

His revers'd face may show distaste. 

And frown upon the ills are past; 

But that which this way looks is clear, 

And smiles upon the New-born Year, 

He looks too from a place so high. 

The Year lies open to his eye; 

And all the moments open are 

To the exact discoverer. 

Yet more and more he smiles upon 

The happy revolution. 

Why should we then suspect or fear 

The influences of a year, 35 



25 



3C 



NEW YEAR'S EVE 9.^ 

E So smiles upon us the first morn, 

'■ And speaks us good so soon as born? 

Plague on't! the last was ill enough, 

This cannot but make better proof; 
«" Or, at the worst, as we brush'd through 

The last, why so we may this too : 

And then the next in reason should 

Be superexcellently good: 

For the worst ills (we daily see) 
10 Have no more perpetuity, 

Than the best fortunes that do fall; 

Which also bring us wherewithal 

Longer their being to support, 

'Than those do of the other sort: 
15 And who has one good year in three, 

And yet repines at destiny. 

Appears ungrateful in the case, 

And merits not the good he has. 

Then let us welcome the New Guest 
20 With lusty brimmers of the best; 

Mirth always should Good Fortune meet. 

And render e'en Disaster sweet: 

And though the Princess turn her back, 

Let us but line ourselves with sack, 
25 We better shall by far hold out, 

Till the next Year she face about. 

How say you, reader — do not these verses smack of the 
rough magnanimity of the old English vein? Do they not 
fortify like a cordial; enlarging the heart, and productive 

30 of sweet blood, and generous spirits, in the concoction? 
Where be those puling fears of death, just now expressed 
or affected? — Passed like a cloud — absorbed in the purging 
sunlight of clear poetry — clean washed away by a wave of 
genuine Helicon, your only Spa for these hypochondries — 

o5 And now another cup of the generous! and a merry New 
Year, and many of them, to^you all, my masters! 



96 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA 

MRS. BATTLE'S OPINIONS ON WHIST. 

"A CLEAR fire, a clean hearth/ and the rigor of the game." 
This was the celebrated wish of old Sarah Battle (now with 
God), who, next to her devotions, loved a good game at 
whist. She was none of your lukewarm gamesters, your 
half and half players^ who have no objection to %ke a hand, 
if you want one to make up a rubber; who affirm that they 
have no pleasure in winning; that they like to win one 
game and lose another;^ that they can while away an hour 
very agreeably at a card-table, but are indifferent whether 
they play or no; and will desire an adversary, who has lo 
slipped a wrong card, to take it up and play another. 
These insufferable trifle rs are the curse of a table. One of 
these flies will spoil a whole pot. Of such it may be said, that 
they do not play at cards, but only play at playing with them. 

Sarah Battle was none of that breed. She detested them, 15 
as I do, from her heart and soul; and would not, save 
upon a striking emergency, willingly seat herself at the same 
table with them. She loved a thorough-paced partner, a 
determined enemy. She took, and gave no concessions. 
She hated favors. She never made a revoke, nor ever 20 
passed it over in her adversary without exacting the utmost ; 
forfeiture. She fought a good fight; cut and thrust. She 
lield not her good sword (her cards) "like a dancer."^ She 
sat bolt upright; and neither showed you her cards, nor 
desired to see yours. All people have their blind side — 25 
their superstitions; and I have heard her declare, under 
the rose, that Hearts was her favorite suit. 

1 [This was before the introduction of rugs, reader. You must 
remember the intolerable crash of the unswept cinder, betwixt your 
foot and the marble . ] ( L . ) 

2 [As if a sportsman should tell you he liked to kill a fox one day, 
and lose hi m the next . ] ( L . ) 

3 See p. 73. 



MRS.. BATTLE'S OPINIONS ON WHIST 97 

I never in my. life — and I knew Sarah Battle many of the 
best years of it — saw her take out her snuff-box when it was 
her turn to play; or snuff a candle in the middle of a game; 
or ring for a servant, till it was fairly over. She never intro- 
5 duced, or connived at, miscellaneous conversation during 
its process. As she emphatically observed, cards were 
cards; and if I ever saw unmingled distaste in her fine last- 
century countenance, it was at the airs of a young gentle- 
man of a literary turn, who had been with difficulty per- 

10 suaded to take a hand; and who, in his excess of candor, 
declared, that he thought there was no harm in unbending 
the mind now and then, after serious studies, in recreations 
of that kind ! She could not bear to have her noble occupa- 
tion, to which she wound up her faculties, considered in that 

15 light. It was her business, her duty, the thing she came 
into the world to do, — and she did it. She unbent her mind 
afterwards — over a book. 

Pope was her favorite author; his Rape of the Lock her 
favorite work. She once did me the favor to play over 

20 with me (with the cards) his celebrated game of Ombre in 
that poem; and to explain to me how far it agreed with, 
and in what points it would be found to differ from, 
tradrille. Her illustrations were apposite and poignant; 
and I had the pleasure of sending the substance of them 

as to Mr. Bowles; but I suppose they came too late to be 
inserted among his ingenious notes upon that author. 

Quadrille, she has often told me, was her first love ; but 
whist had engaged her maturer esteem. The former, she 
said, was showy and specious, and likely to allure young 

30 persons. The uncertainty and quick shifting of partners — 
a thing which the constancy of whist abhors ; — the dazzling 
supremacy and regal investiture of Spadille — absurd, as she 



98 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA 

justly observed, in the pure aristocracy of whist, where his 
crown and garter give him no proper power above his 
brother-nobihty of the Aces; — the giddy vanity, so taking to 
the inexperienced, of playing alone; — above all, the over- 
powering attractions of a Sajis Prendre Vole, — to the 5 
triumph of which, there is certainly nothing parallel or 
approaching, in the Contingencies of whist; — all chese, she 
would «ay, made quadrille a game of captivation to the 
young and enthusiastic. But whist was the" solider game : 
that was her word. It was a long meal; not, like quadrille, lo 
a feast of snatches. One or two rubbers might co-extend in 
duration with an evening. They gave time to form rooted 
friendships, to cultivate steady enmities. She despised the 
chance-started, capricious, and ever fluctuating alliances of 
the other. The skirmishes of quadrille, she would say, is 
reminded her of the petty ephemeral embroilments of the 
little Italian states, depicted by Machiavel; perpetually 
changing postures and connections; bitter foes to-day, 
sugared darlings to-morrow^; kissing and scratching in a 
breath; — but the wars of whist were comparable to the 20 
long, steady, deep-rooted, rational antipathies of the great 
French and English nations. 

A grave simplicity was w^hat she chiefly admired in her 
favorite game. There was nothing silly in it, like the nob 
in cribbage — ^nothing superfluous. No flushes — that most 25 
irrational of all pleas that a reasonable being can set up: — 
that any one should claim four by virtue of holding cards of 
the same mark and color, without reference to the playing 
of the game, or the individual worth or pretensions of the 
cards themselves! She held this to be a solecism; as so 
pitiful an ambition at cards as alliteration is in authorship. 
She despised superficiality, and looked deeper than the 



i 



MRS. BATTLE'S OPINIONS ON WHIST 99 

colors of things. — Suits were soldiers, she would say, and 
must have a uniformity of array to distinguish them: but 
what should we say to a foolish squire, who should claim a 
merit from dressing up his tenantry in red jackets that 

5 never were to be marshaled — never to take the field? — She 
even wished that whist were more simple than it is ; and in 
my mind, would have stripped it of some appendages, which 
in the state of human frailty, may be venially, and eveh 
commendably, allowed of. She saw no reason for the 

10 deciding of the trump by the turn of the card. Why not 
one suit always trumps? — ^Why two colors, when the mark 
of the suits would have sufficiently distinguished them 
without it? — 

"But the eye, my dear madam, is agreeably refreshed 

15 with the variety. Man is not a creature of pure reason— he 
must have his senses delightfully appealed to. We see 
it in Roman Catholic countries, where the music and the 
paintings draw in many to worship, whom your quaker 
spirit of unsensualising would have kept out. — You, your- 

20 self, have a pretty collection of paintings — but confess to 
me, whether, walking in your gallery at Sandham, among 
those clear Vandykes, or among the Paul Potters in the 
ante-room, you ever felt your bosom glow with an elegant 
delight, at all comparable to that you have it in your power 

25 to experience most evenings over a well-arranged assortment 
of the court cards? — the pretty antic habits, like heralds in 
a procession — the gay triumph-assuring scarlets — the con- 
trasting deadly-killing sables — the 'hoary majesty of spades'^ 
— Pam in all his glory! — 

30 "AH these might be dispensed with; and, with their 
naked names upon the drab pasteboard, the game might go 

1 Pope's Rape of the Lock, iii., 56. 



100 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA 

on very well, pictureless. But the beauty of cards would be 
extinguished for ever. Stripped of all that is imaginative in 
them, they must degenerate into mere gambling. — Imagine 
a dull deal-board, or drum head, to spread them on, instead 
of that nice verdant carpet (next to nature's), fittest arena 5 
for those courtly combatants to play their gallant jousts 
and tumeys in! — Exchange those delicately-turned ivory 
markers — (work of Chinese artist, unconscious of their 
symbol, — or as profanely slighting their true application as 
the arrantest Ephesian journeyman that turned out those 10 
little shrines for the goddess)* — exchange them for little bits 
of leather (our ancestors' money) or chalk and a slate!" — 

The old lady, with a smile, confessed the soundness of 
my logic; and to her approbation of my arguments on her 
favorite topic that evening, I have always fancied myself 15 
indebted for the legacy of a curious cribbage-board, made 
of the finest Sienna marble, which her maternal uncle (old 
Walter Plumer, whom I have elsewhere celebrated) brought 
with him from Florence : — this, and a trifle of five hundred 
pounds, came to me at her death. 20 

The former bequest (which I do not least value) I have 
kept with religious care; though she herself, to confess a 
truth, was never greatly taken with cribbage. It was an 
essentially vulgar game, I have heard her say, — disputing 
with her uncle, who was very partial to it. She could never 25 
heartily bring her mouth to pronounce "5^0" — or ^'thafs a 
go." She called it an ungrammatical game. The pegging 
teased her. I once knew her to forfeit a rubber (a five 
dollar stake), because she would not take advantage of the 
tumed-up knave, which would have given it her, but which so 
she must have claimed by the disgraceful tenure of declar- 

1 Acts, xix., 24. 



MRS. BATTLE'S OPINIONS ON WHIST 101 

" ing "two for his heels. ^^ There is something extremely 
genteel in this sort of self-denial. Sarah Battle was a 
gentlewoman bom. 

Piquet she held the best game at the cards for two 

6 persons, though she would ridicule the pedantry of the 
terms — such as pique — repique — the capot — they savored 
(she thought) of affectation. But games for two, or even 
three, she never greatly cared for. She loved the quadrate, 
or square. She would argue thus : — Cards are warfare : the 

ends are gain, with glory. But cards are war in disguise of 
a sport: when single adversaries encounter, the ends pro- 
posed are too palpable. ,By themselves, it is too close a 
fight; with spectators, it is not much bettered. No looker- 
on can be interested, except for a bet, and then it is a mere 

5 affair of money; he cares not for your luck sympathetically , 
or for your play. — Three are still worse; a mere naked war 
of every man against every man, as in cribbage, without 
league or alliance ; or a rotation of petty and contradictory 
interests, a succession of heartless leagues, and not much 

more hearty infractions of them, as in tradrille. — But in 
square games {she meant whist) all that is possible to be 
attained in card-playing is accomplished. There are the 
incentives of profit with honor, common to every species — 
though the latter can be but very imperfectly enjoyed in 

5 those other games, where the spectator is only feebly a 
participator. But the parties in whist are spectators and 
principals too. They are a theatre to themselves, and a 
looker-on is not wanted. He is rather worse than nothing, 
and an impertinence. Whist abhors neutrality, or interests 

,0 beyond its sphere. You glory in some surprising stroke of 
skill or fortune, not because a cold — or even an interested — 
bystander witnesses it, but because your partner sympathises 



102 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA 

in the contingency. You win for two. You triuniph for 
two. Two are exalted. Two again are mortified; which 
divides their disgrace, as the conjunction doubles (by taking 
off the invidiousness) your glory. Two losing to two are 
better reconciled, than one to one in that close butchery. 5 
The hostile feeling is weakened by multiplying the channels. 
War becomes a civil game. — By such reasonings as these 
the old lady was accustomed to defend her favorite pastime. 
No inducement could ever prevail upon her to play at 
any game, where chance entered into the composition, for 10 
nothing. Chance, she would argue — and here again, ad- 
mire the subtlety of her conclusion ! — chance is nothing, but 
where something else depends upon it. It is obvious that 
cannot be glory. What rational cause of exultation could 
it give to a man to turn up size ace a hundred times to- 15 
gether by himself? or before spectators, where no stake 
was depending; — Make a lottery of a hundred thousand 
tickets with but one fortunate number — and what possible 
principle of our nature, except stupid wonderment, could it 
gratify to gain that number as many times successively, 20 
without a prize? — Therefore she disliked the mixture of 
chance in backgammon, where it was not played for money. 
She called it foolish, and those people idiots, who were 
taken with a lucky hit under such circumstances. Games 
of pure skill were as little to her fancy. Played for a stake, 25 
they were a mere system of over-reaching. Played for 
glory, they were a mere setting of one man's wit — his 
memory, or combination-faculty rather — against another's ; 
like a mock-engagement at a review, bloodless and profit- 
less. — She could not conceive a game wanting the sprightly so 
infusion of chance, — the handsome excuses of good fortune. 
Two people playing at chess in a comer of a room, whilst 



MRS. BATTLE'S OPINIONS ON WHIST 103 

whist was stirring in the centre, would inspire her with 
insufferable horror and ennui. Those well-cut similitudes 
of Castles and Knights, the imagery of the board, she would 
argue (and 1 think in this case justly), were entirely mis- 

5 placed and senseless. Those hard head-contests can in no 
instance ally with the fancy. They reject form and colour. 
A pencil and dry slate (she used to say) were the proper 
arena for such combatants. 

To those puny objectors against cards, as nurturing the 

10 bad passions, she would retort that man is a gaming animal. 
He must be always trying to gfit the better in something or 
other: — that this passion can scarcely be more safely 
expended than upon a game at cards; that cards are a 
temporary illusion ; in truth, a mere drama ; for we do but 

15 'play at being mightily concerned, where a few idle shillings 
are at stake, yet, during the illusion, we are as mightily con- 
cerned as those whose stake is crowns and kingdoms. They 
are a sort of dream-fighting; much ado; great battling and 
little bloodshed; mighty means for disproportioned ends; 

20 quite as diverting, and a great deal more innoxious, than 
many of those more serious games of life, which men play, 

without esteeming them to be such. 

With great deference to the old lady's judgment on these 
matters,. I think I have experienced some moments in my 

25 life, when playing at cards for nothing has even been agree- 
able. When I am in sickness,' or not in the best spirits, I 
sometimes call for the cards, and play a game at piquet for 
love with my cousin Bridget — Bridget Elia. 

I grant there is something sneaking in it; but with a 

30 toothache, or a sprained ankle, — ^when you are subdued and 
humble, — ^you are glad to put up with an inferior spring of 
action . 



u 



4 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA 



There is such a thmg in nature, I am convinced, as sick 
whist.— 

I grant it is not the highest style of man — I deprecate 
the manes of Sarah Battle — she lives not, alas I to whom I 
should apologise. — 

At such times, those terms which my old friend objected 
to, come in as something admissible. — I love to get a tierce 
or a quatorze, though they mean nothing. I am subdued 
to an inferior interest. Those shadows of winning amuse 
me. 

That last game I had with my sweet cousin (I capotted 
her) — (dare I tell thee, how foolish I am?) — I wished it- 
might have lasted for ever, though we gained nothing, and 
lost nothing, though it was a mere shade of play: I would 
be content to go on in that idle folly for ever. The pipkin 
should be ever boiling, that was to prepare the gentle lenitive 
to my foot, which Bridget was doomed to apply after the 
game was over: and as I do not much relish appliances, 
there it should ever bubble. Bridget and I should be ever 
playing. 20 

VALENTINE'S DAY. 

Hail to thy returning festival, old Bishop Valentine ! Great 
is thy name in the rubric, thou venerable Arch-flamen of 
Hymen ! Immortal Go-between ! who and what manner of 
person art thou? Art thou but a name, typifying the restless 
principle which impels poor humans to seek perfection in 25 
union? or wert thou indeed a mortal prelate, with thy tippet 
and thy rochet, thy apron on, and decent lawn sleeves? 
Mysterious personage! like unto thee, assuredly, there is 



VALENTINE'S DAY 105 

no other mitred father in the calendar; not Jerome, nor 
Ambrose, nor Cyril; nor the consigner of undipped infants 
to eternal torments, Austin, whom all mothers hate ; nor he 
who hated all mothers, Origen ; nor Bishop Bull, nor Arch- 
5 bishop Parker, nor Whitgift. Thou comest attended with 
thousands and tens of thousands of little Loves, and the 
air is 

Brush'd with the hiss of rustling wings. ^ 

Singing Cupids are thy choristers and thy precentors; and 
10 instead of the crozier, the mystical arrow is borne before 
thee. 

In other words, this is the day on which those charming 
little missives, ycleped Valentines, cross and intercross each 
other at every street and turning. The weary and all fore- 
is spent twopenny postman sinks beneath a load of delicate 
embarrassments, not his own. It is scarcely credible to 
what an extent this ephemeral courtship is carried on in 
this loving town, to the great enrichment of porters, and 
detriment of knockers and bell-wires. In these little visual 
20 interpretations, no emblem is so common as the heart,— 
that little three-cornered exponent of all our hopes and 
fears ,^-the bestuck and bleeding heart; it is twisted and 
tortured into more allegories and affectations than an opera 
hat. What authority we have in history or mythology for 
25 placing the headquarters and metropolis of God Cupid in 
this anatomical seat rather than in any other, is not very 
clear; but we have got it, and it will serve as well as any 
s other. Else we might easily imagine, upon some other 
system which might have prevailed for anything which our 
30 pathology knows to the contrary, a lover addressing his 

1 Paradise Lost, I., 768. 



106 THE ESSAYS OF ELlA 

mistresSj in perfect simplicity of feeling, "Madam, my liver 
and fortune are entirely at your disposal;" or putting a 
delicate question, '^Amanda, have you a midriff to bestow?" 
But custom has settled these things, and awarded the seat 
of sentiment to the aforesaid triangle, while its less fortunate s 
neighbors wait at animal and anatomical distance. 

Not many sounds in life, and I include all urban and all 
rural sound, exceed in interest a knock at the door. It 
**gives a very echo to the throne where hope is seated."^ 
But its issues seldom answer to this oracle within. It is lo 
so seldom that just the person we want to see comes. But 
of all the clamorous visitations the welcomest in expecta- 
tion is the sound that ushers in, or seems to usher in, a 
Valentine. As the raven himself was hoarse that announced 
the fatal entrance of Duncan,^ so the knock of the postman is 
on this day is light, airy, confident, and befitting one that 
bringeth good tidings. It is less mechanical than on other 
days; you will say, "that is not the post, I am sure." 
Visions of Love, of Cupids, of Hymen ! — delightful eternal 
commonplaces, "having been will always be;"^ which no 20 
school-boy nor school-man can write away; having your 
irreversible throne in the fancy and affections— what are 
your transports, when the happy maiden, opening with 
careful fingers, careful not to break the emblematic seal, 
bursts upon the sight of some well-designed allegory, some 25 
type, some youthful fancy, not without verses- 
Lovers all, 
A madrigal, 

or some such device, not over-abundant in sense — young 
Love disclaims it, — and not quite silly — something between 30 

1 Twelfth Nig HT.II., iv., 21. 

2 Macbeth, L, v., 39. 

3 WcHTdsworth, Intimations of Immortality. 



VALENTINE'S DAY 107 

wind and water, a chorus where the sheep might almost 
join the shepherd, as they did, or as I apprehend they did, 
in Arcadia. 

All Valentines are not foolish; and I shall not easily 

5 forget thine, my kind friend (if I may have leave to call 

you so) E. B. — E. B. lived opposite a young maiden, whom 

he had often seen, unseen, from his parlor window, in 

C e Street. She was all joyousness and innocence, and 

just of an age to enjoy receiving a Valentine, and just of a 

10 temper to bear the disappointment of missing one with 
good humor. E. B. is an artist of no common powers; 
in the fancy parts of designing, perhaps inferior to none; 
his name is known at the bottom of many a well-executed 
vignette in the way of his profession, but no further; for 

15 E. B. is modest, and the world meets nobody half-way. 
E. B. meditated how he could repay this young maiden for 
many a favor which she has done him unknown; for 
when a kindly face greets us, though but passing by, and 
never knows us again, nor we it, we should feel it as an 

20 obligation; and E. B. did. This good artist set himself at 
work to please the damsel. It was just before Valentine's 
day three years since. He wrought, unseen, and unsus- 
pected, a wondrous work. We need not say it was on the 
finest gilt paper, with borders — full, not of common hearts 

25 and heartless allegory, but all the prettiest stories of love 
from Ovid and older poets than Ovid (for E. B. is a 
scholar). There was Pyramus and This be, and be sure 
Dido was not forgot, nor Hero and Leander, and swans 
more than sang in Cayster, with mottoes and fanciful 

30 devices, such as beseemed — a work in short of magic. 
Iris dipt the woof .^ This on Valentine's eve he commended 

1 Paradise Lost, xi., 244. 



108 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA 

to the all-swallowing indiscriminate orifice — (O ignoble 
trust!) — of the common post; but the humble medium did 
its duty, and from his watchful stand, the next morning, he 
saw the cheerful messenger knock, and by-and-by the 
precious charge delivered. He saw, unseen, the happy girl 5 
imfold the Valentine, dance about, clap her hands, as one 
after one the pretty emblems unfolded themselves. She 
danced about, not with light love or foolish expectations, 
for she had no lover; or, if she had, none she knew that 
could have created those bright images which delighted 10 
her. It was more like some fairy present; a God-send, as 
our familiarly pious ancestors termed a benefit received, 
where the benefactor was unknown. It would do her 
no harm. It would do her good for ever after. It is 
good to love the unknown. I only give this as a speci- 15 
men of E. B. and his modest way of doing a concealed 
kindness. 

"Good-morrow to my Valentine,"^ sings poor Ophelia; 
and no better wish, but with better auspices, we wish to all 
faithful lovers, who are not too wise to despise old legends, 20 
but are content to rank themselves humble diocesans of old 
Bishop Valentine, and his true church. 

A CHAPTER ON EARS. 

I HAVE no ear. — 

Mistake me not, reader, — nor imagine that I am by 
nature destitute of those exterior twin appendages, hanging 25 
ornaments and (architecturally speaking) handsome volutes 
to the human capital. Better my mother had never borne 
me. — I am, I think, rather delicately than copiously pro- 

1 Hamlet, IV., v., 48 (misquoted). 



A CHAPTER ON EARS 109 

vided with those conduits; and I feel no disposition to 
envy the mule for his plenty, or the mole for her exactness, 
in those ingenious labyrinthine inlets — those indispensable 
side-intelligencers . 

5 Neither have I incurred or done anything to incur, with 
Defoe, that hideous disfigurement, which constrained him 
to draw upon assurance — to feel "quite unabashed,"^ and 
at ease upon that article. I was never, I thank my stars, in 
the pillory; nor, if I read them aright, is it within the 

10 compass of my destiny that I ever should be. 

When therefore I say that I have no ear, you will under- 
stand me to mean — for music. — To say that this heart never 
melted at the concourse of sweet sounds, would be a foul 
self-libel. — "Water parted from the sea" never fails to move 

15 it strangely. So does ''In infancy." But they were used 
to be sung at her harpsichord (the old-fashioned instrument 
in vogue in those days) by a gentlewoman — the gentlest, 
sure, that ever merited the appellation — the sweetest — why 
should I hesitate to name Mrs. S , once the blooming 

20 Fanny Weatherall of the Temple — ^who had power to thrill 
the soul of Elia, small imp as he was, even in his long coats ; 
and to make him glow, tremble, and blush with a passion, 
that not faintly indicated the day-spring of that absorbing 
sentiment, which was afterwards destined to overwhelm and 

25 subdue his nature quite, for Alice W — ^n. 

I even think that sentimentally I am disposed to harmony. 
But organically I am incapable of a tune. I have been 
practising "God save the King" all my life; whistling and 
humming it over to myself in solitary corners ; and am not 

JO yet arrived, they tell me, within many quavers of it. Yet 
hath the loyalty of Elia never been impeached. 

1 "Earless on high stood, unabashed, Defoe."— Dun CI AD. (L.) 



110 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA 

I am not without suspicion that I have an undeveloped 
faculty of music within me. For, thrumming, in my wild 
way, on my friend A/s piano, the°other morning, while he 
was engaged in an adjoining parlor, — on his return he was 
pleased to say, "he thought it could not he the maid!" On s 
his first surprise at hearing the keys touched in somewhat 
an airy and masterful way, not dreaming of me, his suspi- 
cions had lighted on Jenny. But a grace snatched from a 
superior refinement, soon convinced him that some being, — 
technically perhaps deficient, but higher informed from a lo 
principle common to all the fine arts, — ^liad swayed the keys 
to a mood which Jenny, with all her (less -cultivated) en- 
thusiasm, could never have elicited from them. I mention 
this as a proof of my friend's penetration, and not with any 
view of disparaging Jenny. i^ 

Scientifically I could never be made to understand (yet 
have I taken some pains) what a note in music is ; or how 
one note should differ from another. Much less in voices 
• can I distinguish a soprano from a tenor. Only sometimes 
the thorough bass I contrive to guess at, from its being 20 
supereminently harsh and disagreeable. I tremble, how- 
ever, for my misapplication of the simplest terms of that 
which I disclaim. While I profess my ignorance, I scarce 
know what to say I am ignorant of. I hate, perhaps, by 
misnomers. Sostenuto and adagio stand in the like relation 25 
of obscurity to me ; and Sol, Fa, Mi, Re, is as conjuring as 
Baralipton. 

It is hard to stand alone — in an age like this, — (consti- 
tuted to the quick and critical perception of all harmonious 
combinations, I verily believe, beyond all preceding ages, ^'^ 
since Jubal stumbled upon the gamut) ^ — to remain as it 

1 Genesis, IV., 21. 



A CHAPTER ON EARS 111 

were singly unimpressible to the magic influences of an art 
which is said to have such an especial stroke at soothing, 
elevating, and refining the passions. — Yet rather than break 
the candid current of my confessions, I must avow to you, 

5 that I have received a great deal more pain than pleasure 
from this so cried-up faculty. 

I am constitutionally susceptible of noises. A carpen- 
ter's hammer, in a warm summer noon, will fret me into 
more than midsummer madness.-^ But those unconnected, 

10 unset sounds are nothing to the measured malice of music. 
The ear is passive to those single strokes ; willingly enduring 
stripes, while it hath no task to con. To music it cannot 
be passive. It will strive — mine at least will — spite of its 
inaptitude, to thrid the maze; like an unskilled eye painfully 

IS poring upon hieroglyphics. I have sat through an Italian 
Opera, till, for sheer pain, and inexplicable anguish, I have 
rushed out into the noisiest places of the crowded streets, to 
solace myself with sounds, which I was not obliged to 
follow, and get rid of the distracting torment of endless, 

20 fruitless, barren attention ! I take refuge in the unpretend- 
ing assemblage of honest common -life sounds; — and the 
purgatory of the Enraged Musician becomes my paradise. 
I have sat at an Oratorio (that profanation of the pur- 
poses of the cheerful playhouse) watching the faces of the 

25 auditory in the pit (what a contrast to Hogarth's Laughing 
Audience!) immovable, or affecting some faint emotion, — 
till (as some have said, that our occupations in the next 
world will be but a shadow of what delighted us in this) I 
have imagined myself in some cold Theatre in Hades, where 

JO some of the forms of the earthly one should be kept up, with 
none of the enjoyment; or like that — 

1 Twelfth Night, III., iv., 61. 



112 • THE ESSAYS OF ELIA 



-Party in a parlor, 



All silent, and all damned! ^ 

Above all, those insufferable concertos, and pieces of 
music, as they are called, do plague and embitter my appre- 
hension. — ^Words are something; but to be exposed to an 5 
endless battery of mere sounds; to be long a-dying, to lie 
stretched upon a rack of roses; to keep up languor by 
unintermitted effort; to pile honey upon sugar, and sugar 
upon honey, to an interminable tedious sweetness; to fill 
up sound with feeling, and strain ideas to keep pace with it; 10 
to gaze on empty frames, and be forced to make the pictures 
for yourself; to read a book all stops, and be obliged to 
supply the verbal matter; to invent extempore tragedies to 
answer to the vague gestures of an inexplicable rambling 
mime — these are faint shadows of what I have undergone 15 
from a series of the ablest-executed pieces of this empty 
instrumental music. 

I deny not, that in the opening of a concert, I have 
experienced something vastly lulling and agreeable : — after- 
wards folio we th the languor, and the oppression. Like that 20 
disappointing book in Patmos f or, like the comings on of 
melancholy, described by Burton, doth music make her first 
insinuating approaches: — "Most pleasant it is to such as 
are melancholy given, to walk alone in some solitary grove, 
betwixt wood and water, by some brook side, and to 25 
meditate upon some delightsome and pleasant subject, 
which shall affect him most, amabilis insania, and mentis 
gratissimus error. A most incomparable delight to build 
castles in the air, to go smilirg to themselves, acting an 
infinite variety of parts, which they suppose, and strongly so 

1 Wordsworth, Peter Bell,. 

2 Revelation, x., 10. 



A CHAPTER ON EARS 113 

imagine, they act, or that they see done. — So delightsome 
these toys at first, they could spend whole days and nights 
without sleep, even whole years in such contemplations, 
and fantastical meditations, which are like so many dreams, 
5 and will hardly be drawn from them — winding and unwind- 
ing themselves as so many clocks, and still pleasing their 
humors, until at last the scene turns upon a sudden, 
and they being now habitated to such meditations and 
solitary places, can endure no company, can think of 

10 nothing but harsh and distasteful subjects. Fear, sorrow, 
suspicion, suhrusticus pudor, discontent, cares, and weari- 
ness of life, surprise them on a sudden, and they can think 
^of nothing else : continually suspecting, no sooner are their 
eyes open, but this infernal plague of melancholy seizeth 

15 upon them, and terrifies their souls, representing some 
dismal object to their minds ; which now, by no means, no 
labor, no persuasions, they can avoid, they cannot be rid 
of, they cannot resist." 

Something like this "scene-turning" I have experienced 

20 at the evening parties, at the house of my good Catholic 

friend Nov ; who, by the aid of a capital organ, himself 

the most finished of players, converts his drawing-room into 
a chapel, his week-days into Sundays, and^these latter into 
minor heavens.^ 

25 When my friend commences upon one of those solemn 
anthems, which peradventure struck upon my heedless ear, 
rambling in the side aisles of the dim Abbey, some five-and- 
thirty years since, waking a new sense, and putting a soul of 
old religion into my young apprehension — (whether it be 

30 that,^ in which the psalmist, weary of the persecutions of 

1 I have been there, and still would go; 

'Tis like a little heaven below. — Dr. Watts. (L.) 

2 Psalm 55:6. 



114 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA 

bad men, wisheth to himself dove's wings, or that otker,^ 
which with a Hke measure of sobriety and pathos, inquireth 
by what means the young man shall best cleanse his mind) 
— a holy calm pervade th me. — I am for the time 

rapt above earth, 5 

And possess joys not promised at my birth .^ 

But when this master of the spell, not content to have 
laid a soul prostrate, goes on, in his power, to inflict more 
bliss than lies in her capacity to receive, — impatient to 
overcome her "earthly" with his "heavenly,"^ — still pouring 10 
in, for protracted hours, fresh waves and fresh from the sea 
of sound, or from that inexhausted German ocean, above 
which, in triumphant progress, dolphin-seated, ride those 
Arions Haydn and Mozart, with their attendant tritons 
Bach, Beethoven, and a countless tribe, whom to attempt to 15 
reckon up would but plunge me again in the deeps, — I 
stagger under the weight of harmony, reeling to and fro at 
my wit's end; — clouds, as of frankincense, oppress me — 
priests, altars, censers, dazzle before me — the genius of his 
religion hath me in her toils — a shadowy triple tiara invests 20 
the brow of my friend, late so naked, so ingenuous — he is 
Pope, — and by him sits, like as in the anomaly of dreams, a 
she-Pope too, — tri-co rone ted like himself! — I am converted, 
and yet a Protestant; — at once malleus hereticorum, and 
myself grand heresiarch: or three heresies centre in my 25 
person: I am Marcion, Ebion, and Cerinthus — Gog and 
Magog^ — ^what not? — till the coming in of the friendly 
supper-tray dissipates the figment, and a draught of true 

1 Psalm 119:9. 

2 Walton's Complete Angler, I., Ch. 4, adapted. 

3 I. Corinthians, xv., 48. 

4 Revelation, xx., S. 



A CHAPTER ON EARS 115 

Lutheran beer (in which chiefly my friend shows himself no 
bigot) at once reconciles me to the rationaHties of a purer 
faith; and restores to me the genuine un terrifying aspects 
of my pleasant-countenanced host and hostess. 

[P.S. — A writer, whose real name it seems is Boldero, but 
who has been entertaining the town for the last twelve 
months with some very pleasant lucubrations under the 
assumed signature of Leigh Hunt,^ in his "Indicator" of 
the 31st January last has thought fit to insinuate that I, 
Elia, do not write the little sketches which bear my signa- 
ture in this magazine, but that the true author of them is a 
Mr. L — b. Observe the critical period at which he has 
chosen to impute the calumny, — on the very eve of the 
publication of our last number, — affording no scope for 
explanation for a full month; during which time I must lie 
writhing and tossing under the cruel imputation of nonen- 
tity. Good Heavens ! that a plain man must not be allowed 
to be 

They call this an age of personality; but surely this spirit 
of anti-personality (if I may so express it) is something 
worse. 

Take away my moral reputation, — I may live to tliscredit 
that calumny; injure my literary fame — I may write that up 
again; but, when a gentleman is robbed of his identity, 
where is he? 

Other murderers stab but at our existence, a frail and 
'perishing trifle at the best; but here is an assassin who aims 
at our very essence; who not only forbids us to be any 
longer, but to have been at all. Let our ancestors look to it. 



1 Clearly a fictitious appellation; for, if we admit the latter of these 
names to be in a manner English, what is Leigh? Christian nomen- 
clature knows no such. (L ) 



116 THE ESSAYS OF ELI A 

Is the parish register nothing? Is the house in Princes 
Street, Cavendish Square, where we saw the light six-and- 
forty years ago, nothing? Were our progenitors from 
stately Genoa, where we flourished four centuries back, 
before the barbarous name of Boldero^ was known to a 
European mouth, nothing? Was the goodly scion of our 
name, transplanted into England in the reign of the seventh 
Henry, nothing? Are the archives of the steelyard, * in 
.succeeding reigns (if haply they survive the fury of our 
envious enemies), showing that we flourished in prime lo 
repute, as merchants, down to the period of the Common- 
wealth, nothing? 

Why, then the world, and all that's in't, is nothing^ 
The covering sky is nothing; Bohemia nothing.' 

I am ashamed that this trifling writer should have power is 
to move me so.] 

ALL FOOLS' DAY. 

The compliments of the season to my worthy masters, and 
a merry first of April to us all! 

Many happy returns of this day to you — and you — and 
you, sir, — ^nay, never frown, man, nor put a long face upon lol 
the matter. Do not we know one another? what need of j 
ceremony among friends ? we have all a touch of that same \ 
— ^you understand me — a speck of the motley. Beshrew 
the man who on such a day as this, the general festival, 
should affect to stand aloof. I am none of those sneakers. 25i 
I am free of the corporation, and care not who knows it. : 
He that meets me in the forest to-day,^ shall meet with no 

1 It is clearly of transatlantic origin. (L.) 

2 "Winter's Tale, I., ii., 293. 

3 As You Like It, II., vli.. 22, and V., Iv., 42. 



ALL FOOLS'' DAY 117 

wiseacre, I can tell him. Stultus sum. Translate me that, 
and take the meaning of it to yourself for your pains. 
What, man, we have four quarters of the globe on our side, 
at the least computation. 
5 Fill us a cup of that sparkling gooseberry — ^we will drink 
no wise, melancholy, politic, port on this day — and let us 
troll the catch of Amiens — due ad me — due ad me — ^how 
goes it? 

Here shall he see, 
10 Gross fools as he.* 

Now would I give a trifle to know historically and authen- 
tically, who was the greatest fool that ever lived. I would 
certainly give him a bumper. Marry, of the present breed, 
I think I could without much difficulty name you the party. 
15 Remove your cap a little farther if you please; it hides 
my bauble. And now each man bestride his hobby, and 
dust away his bells to what tune he pleases. I will give 
you, for my part, 

the crazy old church clock, 

20 And the bewilder 'd chimes.^ 

Good master Empedocles,^ you are welcome. It is long 
since you went a salamander-gathering down iEtna. Worse 
than samphire-picking^ by. some odds. 'Tis a mercy your 
worship did not singe your mustachios. 
25 Hal CleombrotusP and what salads in faith did you 
light upon at the bottom of the Mediterranean? You 



(L.) 



1 As You Like It, II., v., 56, 57. 

2 Wordsworth, The Fountain. 

3 He who, to be deem'd 

A god, leap'd fondly into Etna flames — —[Par. Lost, III, 470]. (L.) 

4 King Lear, IV., vi., 15. 

5 He who, to enjoy 

Plato's Elysium, leap'd into the sea [Par. Lost, III, 471-2]. 



118 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA 

were founder, I take it, of the disinterested sect of the 
Calenturists. 

Gebir, my old freemason, and prince of plaisterers at 
Babel,^ bring in your trowel, most Ancient Grand 1 You 
have claim to a seat here at my right hand, as patron of 
the stammerers. You left your work, if I remember 
Herodotus correctly, at eight hundred million toises, or 
thereabout, above the level of the sea. Bless us, what a 
long bell you must have pulled to call your top workmen 
to their nuncheon on the low grounds of Senaar. Or did lo 
you send up your garlic and onions by a rocket? I am a 
rogue if I am not ashamed to show you our Monument on 
Fish Street Hill, after your altitudes . Yet we think it some- 
what. 

What, the magnanimous Alexander in tears? — cry, baby, isi 
put its finger in its eye, it shall have another globe, round 
as an orange, pretty moppet! 

Mister Adams 'odso, I honor your coat^ — ^pray do us 

the favor 4o read to us that sermon, which you lent to 
Mistress Slipslop — the twenty and second in your portman- ^ 
teau there — on Female Incontinence— th© same — it will 
come in most irrelevantly and impertinently seasonable to I 
the time of the day. 

Good Master Raymund Lully, you look wise. Pray 
correct that error. ^^* 

Duns, spare your definitions. I must fine you a bumper, 
or a paradox. We will have nothing said or done syllo- 
gistically this day. Remove those logical forms, waiter, , 
that no gentleman break the tender shins of his appre- I 
hension stumbling across them. ^.1 



1 The builders next of Babel on the plain 
Of Senaar. — [Par. Lost, III., 466]. (L.) 



ALL FOOL'S DAY 119 

Master Stephen, you are late. — Ha! Cokes, is it you? — 
Aguecheek, my dear knight, let me pay my devoir to you. — 
Master Shallow, your worship's poor servant to command. 
— Master Silence, I will use few words with you. — Slender, 

5 it shall go hard if I edge not you in somewhere. — You six 
will engross all the poor wit of the company to-day. — I 
know it, I know it. 

Hal honest R , my fine old Librarian of Ludgate, 

time out of mind, art thou here again? Bless thy doublet, 

it is not over-new, threadbare as thy stories: — what dost 
thou flitting about the world at this rate? — ^Thy customers 
are extinct, defunct, bed-rid, have ceased to read long ago. 
— Thou goest still among them, seeing if, peradventure, 
thou canst hawk a volume or two. — Good Granville S , 

5 thy last patron, is flown. 

King Pandion, he is dead, 

All thy friends are lapt in lead,* — 

Nevertheless, noble R , come in, and take your seat 

here, between Armado and Quisada; for in true courtesy, 

in gravity, in fantastic smiling to thyself, in courteous 
smiling upon others, in the goodly ornature of well-appar- 
elled speech, and the commendation of wise sentences, thou 
art nothing inferior to those accomplished Dons of Spain. 
The spirit of chivalry forsake me for ever, when I forget 

15 thy singing the song of Macheath, which declares that he 
might be happy with either,^ situated between those two 
ancient spinsters — ^when I forget the inimitable formal love 
which thou didst make, turning now to the one, and now to 
the other, with that Malvolian smile^ as if Cervantes, not 

1 R. Bamfleld, As It Fell Upon a Day. 

2 Gay, Beggar's Opera. 

3 Twelfth Night, II., v., and III., iv. 



120 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA 

Gay, had written it for his hero; and as if thousands of 
periods must revolve, before the mirror of courtesy could 
have given his invidious preference between a pair of so 
goodly-propertied and meritorious-equal damsels. . . . 

To descend from these altitudes, and not to protract our 5 
Fool's Banquet beyond its appropriate day, — for I fear the 
second of April is not many hours distant — in sober verity 
I will confess a truth to thee, reader. I love a Fool — 
as naturally, as if I were of kith and kin to him. When 
a child, with childlike apprehensions, that dived not below 10 
the surface of the matter, I read those Parables^ — ^not guess- 
ing at their involved wisdom — I had more yearnings 
towards that simple architect, that built his house upon the 
sand, than I entertained for his more cautious neighbor; 
I grudged at the hard censure pronounced upon the quiet 15 
soul that kept his talent; and — ^prizing their simplicity 
beyond the more provident, and, to my apprehension, some- 
what unfeminine wariness, of their competitors — I felt a 
kindliness, that almost amounted to a tendre, for those five 
thoughtless virgins, — I have never made an acquaintance 20 
since, that lasted, or a friendship, that answered, with any 
that had not some tincture of the absurd in their char- 
acters. I venerate an honest obliquity of understanding. 
The more laughable blunders a man shall commit in your 
company, the more tests he giveth you, that he will not 25 
betray or overreach you. I love the safety, which a palpa- 
able hallucination warrants ; the security, which a word out 
of season ratifies. And take my word for this, reader, and 
say a fool told it you, if you please, that he who hath not 
a dram of folly in his mixture, hath pounds of much worse so 
matter in his composition. It is observed, that ''the 

1 Matthew, vii., 24; xxv., 1-30. 



A QUAKERS' MEETING 121 

foolisher the fowl or fish — woodcocks, — dotterels, — cod's- 
heads, etc., the finer the flesh thereof,"^ and what are 
commonly the world's received fools, but such whereof the 
world is not worthy? and what have been some of the 
5 kindliest patterns of our species, but so many darlings of 
absurdity, minions of the goddess, and her white boys? — 
Reader, if you wrest my words beyond their fair construc- 
tion, it is you, and not I, that are the April Fool. 

A QUAKERS' MEETING. 

Still-born Silence! thou that art 
10 Flood-gate of the deeper heart! 

Offspring of a heavenly kind ! 

Frost o' the mouth, and thaw o' the mind! 

Secrecy's confidant, and he 

Who makes religion mystery! 
15 Admiration's speaking'st tongue! 

Leave, thy desert shades among, 

Reverend hermits' hallow'd cells, 

"Where retired devotion dwells! 

"With thy enthusiasms come, 
2Q Seize our tongues, and strike us dumb!^ 

Reader, wouldst thou know what true peace and quiet 
mean; wouldst thou find a refuge from the noises and 
clamors of the multitude; wouldst thou enjoy at once 
solitude and society; wouldst thou possess the depth of 
25 thy own spirit in stillness, without being shut out from the 
consolatory faces of thy species; wouldst thou be alone, 
and yet accompanied; solitary, yet not desolate; singular, 
yet not without some to keep thee in countenance; a unit 
in aggregate ; a simple in composite : — come with me into a 



so 



Quakers' Meeting. 



1 Sir Thomas Browne (Craig). 

2 From Poems of All Sorts, by Richard Fleckno, 1653. (L.) 



122 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA 

Dost thou love silence as deep as that "before the winds 
were made?" go not out mto the wilderness, descend not 
into the profundities of the earth; shut not up thy case- 
ments; nor pour wax into the little cells of thy ears, with 
little -faithed self-mis trusting Ulysses, — Retire with me into 5 
a Quakers' Meeting. 

For a man to refrain even from good words, and to hold 
his peace, it is commendable; but for a multitude, it is 
great mastery. 

What is the stillness of the desert, compared with this lo 
place? what the un communicating muteness of fishes? — 
here the goddess reigns and revels. — "Boreas, and Cesias, 
and Argestes loud,"^ do not with their inter-confoundmg 
uproars more augment the brawl — ^nor the waves of the 
blovm Baltic with their clubbed somids — than their opposite is 
(Silence her sacred self) is multiplied and rendered more 
intense by numbers and by sympathy. She too hath her 
deeps, that call unto deeps .^ Negation itself hath a positive 
more and less ; and closed eyes would seem to obscure the 
great obscurity of midnight. 20 

There are wounds, which an imperfect solitude cannot 
heal. By imperfect I mean that which a man enjoyeth by 
himself. The perfect is that which he can sometimes attain 
in crowds, but nowhere so absolutely as in a Quakers' 
Meeting. — Those first hermits did certainly understand this 25 
principle, when they retired into Egyptian solitudes, not 
singly, but in shoals, to enjoy one another's want of con- 
versation. The Carthusian is bound to his brethren by 
this agreeing spirit of incommunicativeness. In secular 
occasions, what so pleasant as to be reading a book through se 

1 Paradise Lost, X., 699. 

2 Psalms, xlil., 7. 



A QUAKERS' MEETING 123 

^ long winter evening, with a friend sitting by — say, a wife 
— he, or she, too (if that be probable), reading another, 
without interruption, or oral communication? — can there be 
no sympathy without the gabble of words ? — away with this 
inhuman, shy, single, shade-and-cavern-haunting solitari- 
ness. Give me. Master Zimmerman, a sympathetic solitude. 
To pace alone in the cloisters, or side aisles of some 
cathedral, time-stricken : 

Or under hanging mountains, 
Or by the fall of fountains;^ 

is but a vulgar luxury, compared with that which those 
enjoy, who come together for the purposes of more com- 
plete, abstracted solitude. This is the loneliness "to bf 
felt." — ^The Abbey Church of Westminster hath nothing st 
solemn, so spirit-soothing, as the naked walls and benches 
of a Quakers' Meeting. Here are no tombs, no inscriptions 

sands, ignoble things, 

Dropt from the ruin'd sides of kings — ^ 

but here is something, which throws Antiquity herself into 
the foreground — Silence — eldest of things — language of 
old Night — primitive Discourser — to which the insolent 
decays of mouldering grandeur have but arrived by a 
violent, and, as we may say, unnatural progression. 

How reverend is the view of these hush'd heads 
Looking tranquillity!^ 

Nothing-plotting, nought-caballing, unmischievous synod j 
convocation without intrigue! parliament without debate: 
what a lesson dost thou read to council, and to consistory! 

1 Pope, St. Cecelia's Day. 

2 Beaumont, To the Tombs in the Abbey. 

3 Congreve, The Mourning Bride, adapted. 



124 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA 

— if my pen treat of you lightly — as haply it will wander- 
yet my spirit hath gravely felt the wisdom of your custom, 
when sitting among you in deepest peace, which some out- 
welling tears would rather confirm than disturb, I have 
reverted to the times of your beginnings, and the sowings s 
of the seed by Fox and Dewesbury. — I have witnessed that, 
which brought before my eyes your heroic tranquillity, 
inflexible to the rude jests and serious violences of the 
insolent soldiery, republican or royalist, sent to molest you 
— for ye sate betwixt the fires of two persecutions, the out- lo 
cast and off -scouring of church and presbytery, — I have seen 
the reeling sea-rufhan, who had wandered into your recep- 
tacle, with the avowed intention of disturbing your quiet, 
from the very spirit of the place receive in a moment a new 
heart, and presently sit among ye as a lamb amidst lambs, is 
And I remembered Penn before his accusers, and Fox in 
the bail-dock, where he was lifted up in spirit, as he tells 
us, and "the Judge and the Jury became as dead men 
under his feet." 

Reader, if you are not acquainted with it, I would recom- 20 
mend to you, above all church-narratives, to read Sewel's 
History of the Quakers. It is in folio, and is the abstract 
of the journals of Fox, and the Primitive Friends. It is 
far more edifying and affecting than anything you w^ill read 
of Wesley and his colleagues. Here is nothing to stagger 25 
you, nothing to make you mistrust, no suspicion of alloy, no 
drop or dreg of the worldly or ambitious spirit. You will 
here read the true story of that much-injured, ridiculed' 
man (who perhaps hath been a by-word in your mouth), — 
James Naylor: what dreadful sufferings, with what patience so 
he endured, even to the boring through of his tongue with 
red-hot irons without a murmur; and with what strength of 



A QUAKERS' MEETING 125 

mind, when the delusion he had fallen into, which they 
stigmatised for blasphemy, had given way to clearer 
thoughts, he could renounce his error, in a strain of the 
beautifullest humility, yet keep his first grounds, and be a 

5 Quaker still ! — so different from the practice of your com- 
mon converts from enthusiasm, who, when they apostatise, 
apostatise all, and think they can never get far enough from 
the society of their former errors, even to the renunciation 
of some saving truths, with which they had been mingled, 

10 not implicated. 

Get the writings of John Woolman by heart; and love 
the early Quakers. 

How far the followers of these good men in our days have 
kept to the primitive spirit, or in what proportion they have 

15 substituted formality for it, the Judge of Spirits can alone 
determine. I have seen faces in their assemblies, upon 
which the dove sate visibly brooding. Others again I have 
watched, when my thoughts should have been better 
engaged, in which I could possibly detect nothing but a 

20 blank inanity. But quiet was in all, and the disposition to 
unanimity, and the absence of the fierce controversial work- 
ings. — If the spiritual pretensions of the Quakers have 
abated, at least they make few pretences. Hypocrites they 
certainly are not, in their preaching. It is seldom indeed 

25 that you shall see one get up amongst them to hold forth. 
Only now and then a trembling female, generally ancient, 
voice is heard — ^you cannot guess from what part of the 
meeting it proceeds — ^with a low, buzzing, musical sound, 
laying out a few words which "she thought might suit the 

30 condition of some present," with a quaking diffidence which 
leaves no possibility of supposing that anything of female 
vanity was mixed up, where the tones were so full of ten- 



126 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA 

demess, and a restraining modesty. — The men, from what I 
have observed, speak seldomer. 

Once only, and it was some years ago, I witnessed a 
sample of the old Foxian orgasm. It was a man of giant 
stature, who, as Wordsworth phrases it, might have danced s 
"from head to foot equipt in iron mail."^ His frame was of 
iron too. But he was malleable. I saw him shake all over 
with the spirit — I dare not say, of delusion. The strivings 
of the outer man were unutterable — he seemed not to speak, 
but to be spoken from. I saw the strong man bowed lo 
down, and his knees to fail — his joints all seemed loosening 
— it was a figure to set off against Paul preaching — the 
words he uttered were few, and sound — ^he was evidently 
resisting his will — keeping dow^n his own word-wisdom with 
more mighty effort, than the world's orators strain for theirs, w 
**He had been a Wit in his youth," he told us, with ex- 
pressions of a sober remorse. And it was not till long 
after the impression had begun to wear away, that I w^as 
enabled, with something like a smile, to recall the striking ; 
incongruity of the confession — understanding the term in 20 
its worldly acceptation — with the frame and physiognomy 
of the person before me. His brow would have scared away ' 
the Levities — the Jocos Risus-que — faster than the Loves 
fled the face of Dis at Enna. — By wit, even in his youth, I 
will be sworn he understood something far within the limits 25 j 
of an allowable liberty. 

More frequently the Meeting is broken up without a word 
having been spoken. But the mind has been fed. You go 
away with a sermon, not made with hands. ^ You have 
been in the milder caverns of Trophonius; or as in some 



i Wordsworth, 'Tis Said that Some Have Died for Love. 
2 II. Corinthians, v., 1. 



THE OLD AND THE NEW SCHOOLMASTER 127 

den, where that fiercest and savagest of all wild creatures^ 
the Tongue, that unruly member,^ has strangely lain tied 
up and captive. You have bathed with stillness. — O when 
the spirit is sore fretted, even tired to sickness of the jang- 

)5 lings, and nonsense-noises of the world, what a balm and a 
solace it is, to go and seat yourself, for a quiet half -hour, 
upon some undisputed comer of a bench, among the gentle 
Quakers ! 

Their garb and stillness conjoined, present an uniform- 

)jo ity, tranquil and herdlike — as in the pasture — "forty 
feeding like one." — "^ 

The very garments of a Quaker seem incapable of 
receiving a soil; and cleanliness in them to be something 
more than the absence of its contrary. Every Quakeress is 

M5 a lily; and when they come up in bands to their Whitsun- 
conferences, whitening the easterly streets of the metropolis, 
from all parts of the United Kingdom, they show like troops 
of the Shining Ones.^ 

3 THE OLD AND THE NEW SCHOOLMASTER. 

My reading has been lamentably desultory and immethod- 
20 ical. Odd, out-of-the-way, old English plays and treatises, 
have supplied me with most of my notions and ways of feel- 
ing. In everything that relates to science, I am a whole 
Encyclopaedia behind the rest of the world, I should have 
scarcely cut a figure among the franklins, or country gentle- 
25 men, in Xing John's days. I know less geography than a 
schoolboy of six weeks' standing. To me a map of old 
Ortelius is as authentic as Arrowsmith. I do not know 

1 James, iii., 5. 

"2 Wordsworth, Lines Written in Makch. 

3 The Pilgrim's Progress. Pt. I., xx. 



128 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA 

whereabout Africa merges into Asia; whether Ethiopia lie 
in one or other of those great divisions; nor can form the 
remotest conjecture of the position of New South Wales, 
or Van Diemen's Land. Yet do I hold a correspondence 
with a very dear friend in the first-named of these two 5 
Terrse Incognitae. I have no astronomy. I do not know 
where to look for the Bear, or Charleses Wain; the place 
of any star; or the name of any of them at sight. I guess 
at Venus only by her brightness— and if the sun on some 
portentous mom were to make his first appearance in the 10 
West, I verily believe that, while all the world were gasp- 
ing in apprehension about me, I alone should stand un- 
terrified, from sheer incuriosity and want of observation. 
Of history and chronology I possess some vague points, 
such as one cannot help picking up in the course of miscel- 15 
laneous study; but I never deliberately sat down to a 
chronicle, even of my own country. I have most dim 
apprehensions of the four great monarchies; and some- 
times the Assyrian, sometimes the Persian, floats as first in 
my fancy. I make the widest conjectures concerning Egypt 20 
and her shepherd kings. My friend M., with great pains- 
taking, got me to think I understood the first proposition 
m Euclid, but gave me over in despair at the second. I 
am entirely unacquainted with the modem languages: and, 
like a better man than myself, have "small Latin and less 25 
Greek."! I am a stranger to the shapes and texture of the 
commonest trees, herbs, flowers— not from the circum- 
stance of my being town-born- for I should have brought 
the same inobservant spirit into the world with me, had I 
first seen it "on Devon's leafy shores,"^— and am no' less at 30 

1 Ben Jonson, Shakespeare. 

2 Wordsworth, Excursion, III, ^ 



THE OLD AND THE NEW SCHOOLMASTER 129 

a loss among purely town-objects, tools, engines, mechanic 
processes. — Not that I affect ignorance — but my head has 
not many mansions, nor spacious ; and I have been obliged 
to fill it with such cabinet curiosities as it can hold without 
i aching. I sometimes wonder, how I have passed my 
probation with so little discredit in the w^orld, as I have 
done, upon so meagre a stock. But the fact is, a man may 
do very well with a very little knowledge, and scarce be 
found out, in mixed company; everybody is so much more 

ready to produce his own, than to call for a display of your 
■ acquisitions. But in a tete-a-tete there is no shuffling. The 

truth will out. There is nothing which I dread so much, as 
the being left alone for a quarter of an hour with a sensible, 

i well-informed man, that does not know me. I lately got 

5 into a dilemma of this sort. — 

In one of my daily jaunts between Bishopsgate and 
Shacklewell, the coach stopped to take up a staid-looking 
gentleman, about the wrong side of thirty, who was giving 

1 his parting directions (w^hile the steps were adjusting), in a 
tone of mild authority, to a tall youth, who seemed to be 

neither his clerk, his son, nor his servant, but something 
partaking of all three. The youth was dismissed, and we 
drove on. As we were the sole passengers, he naturally 
enough addressed his conversation to me ; and we discussed 

5 the merits of the fare, the civility and punctuality of the 
driver; the circumstance of an opposition coach having been 
lately set up, with the probabilities of its success— to all 
which I was enabled to return pretty satisfactory answers, 
having been drilled into this kind of etiquette by some years' 

daily practice of riding to and fro in the stage aforesaid— 
when he suddenly alarmed me by a startling question, 
whether I had seen the show of prize cattle that morning in 



130 * THE ESSAYS OF ELIA 

Smithfield? Now as I had not seen it, and do not greatly 
care for such sort of exhibitions, I was obHged to return a 
cold negative. He seemed a little mortified, as well as 
astonished, at my declaration, as (it appeared) he was just 
come fresh from the sight, and doubtless had hoped to s 
compare notes on the subject. However he assured me 
that I had lost a fine treat, as it far exceeded the show of 
last year. We were now approaching Norton Folgate, 
when the sight of some shop-goods ticketed freshened him up 
into a dissertation upon the cheapness of cottons this spring, ia 
I was now a little in heart, as the nature of my morning . 
avocations had brought me into some sort of familiarity 
with the raw material; and I was surprised to find how 
eloquent I was becoming on the state of the India market 
— when, presently, he dashed my incipient vanity to the 15 
earth at once, by inquiring whether I had ever made any 
calculation as to the value of the rental of all the retail 
shops in London. Had he asked of me, what sorg the 
Sirens sang, or what name Achilles assumed when he hid 
himself among women, I might, with Sir Thomas Browne, 20 
have hazarded a "wide solution."^ My companion saw my 
embarrassment, and, the alms-houses beyond Shoreditch 
just coming in view, with great good-nature and dexterity 
shifted his conversation to the subject of public charities, 
which led to the comparative merits of provision for the 25 
poor in past and present times, with observations on the old 
monastic institutions, and charitable orders; — but, finding 
me rather dimly impressed with some glimmering notions 
from old poetical associations, than strongly fortified with 
any speculations reducible to calculation on the subject, he so 
gave the matter up; and, the country beginning to open 

1 Urn-Burial [Chap. V.] (L."! 



THE OLD AND THE NEW SCHOOLMASTER 131 

more and more upon us, as we approached the turnpike at 
Kingsland (the destined termination of his journey), he put 
a home-thrust upon me, in the most unfortunate position 
he could have chosen, by advancing some queries relative 

i to the North Pole Expedition. While I was muttering out 
something about the Panorama of those strange regions 
(which I had actually seen), by way of parrying the ques- 
tion, the coach stopping relieved me from any further 
apprehensions. My companion getting out, left me in the 

Lo comfortable possession of my ignorance ; and I heard him, 
as he went off, putting questions to an outside passenger, 
who had alighted with him, regarding an epidemic disorder 
that had been rife about Dalston, and which, my friend 
assured him, had gone through five or six schools in that 

15 neighborhood. The truth now flashed upon me, that my 
companion was a schoolmaster; and that the youth, whom 
he had parted from at our first acquaintance, must have 
been one of the bigger boys, or the usher. — He was evi- 
dently a kind-hearted man, who did not seem so much 

,50 desirous of provoking discussion by the questions which he 
put, as of obtaining information at any rate. It did not 
appear that he took any interest, either, in such kind of 
inquiries, for their own sake ; but that he was in some w^ay 
bound to seek for knowledge. A greenish-colored coat, 

,55 which he had on, forbade me to surmise that he was a 
clergyman. The adventure gave birth to some reflections 
on the difference between persons of his profession in past 
and present times. 

Rest to the souls of those fine old Pedagogues ; the breed, 

io long since extinct, of the Lilys, and the Linacres: who be- 
lieving that all learning was contained in the languages 
which they taught, and despising every other acquirement 



132 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA 

tis superficial and useless, came to their task as to a sport I 
Passing from infancy to age, they dreamed away all their 
days as in a grammar-school. Revolving in a perpetual 
cycle of declensions, conjugations, syntaxes, and prosodies; 
renewing constantly the occupations which had charmed 5 
their studious childhood; rehearsing continually the part 
of the past; life must have slipped from them at the last 
like one day. Ttiey were always in their first garden, 
reaping harvests of their golden time, among their Flori 
and their Spici-legia; in Arcadia still, but kings; the ferule 10 
of their sway not much harsher, but of like dignity with that 
mild sceptre attributed to King Basileus; the Greek and 
Latin, their stately Pamela and their Philoclea: with the 
occasional duncery of some untoward Tyro, serving for a 
refreshing interlude of a Mopsa, or a clown Damsetas I 15 

With what a savor doth the Preface to Colet's, or (as 
it is sometimes called) Paul's Accidence, set forth! "To ' 
exhort every man to the learning of grammar, that intendeth 
to attain the understanding of the tongues, wherein it con- '< 
tained a great treasury of wisdom and knowledge, it would 20 
seem but vain and lost labor; for so much as it is known, 
that nothing can surely be ended, whose beginning is either 
feeble or faulty; and no building be perfect, whereas the 
foundation and ground-work is ready to fall, and unable to 
uphold the burden of the frame." How well doth this 25' 
stately preamble (comparable to those which Milton com- 
mendeth as "having been the usage to prefix to some 
solenm law, then first promulgated by Solon, or Lycurgus") 
correspond with and illustrate that pious zeal for conform- 
ity, expressed in a succeeding clause, which would fence so '! 
about grammar-rules with the severity of faith-articles! — 
"as for the diversity of grammars, it is well profitably taken 



THE OLD AND THE NEW SCHOOLMASTER 133 

away by the king majesties wisdom, who foreseeing the 

inconvenience, and favorably providing tlie remedie, 

caused one kind of grammar by sundry learned men to be 

diligently drawn, and so to be set out, only everywhere to 

5 be taught for the use of learners, and for the hurt in 

changing of schoolmaisters." What a gusto in that which 

follows : "wherein it is profitable that he can orderly decline 

his noun, and his verb." Hi^ noun ! 

1 The fine dream is fading away fast; and the least concern 

10 of a teacher in the present day is to inculcate grammar-rules. 

The modem schoolmaster is expected to know a little of 

everything, because his pupil is required not to be entirely 

ignorant of anything. He must be superficially, if I may 

' so say, omniscient. He is to know something of pneu- 

is matics; of chemistry; of whatever is curious, or proper to 

excite the attention of the youthful mind; an insight into 

mechanics is desirable, with a touch of statistics; the 

quality of soils, etc. ; botany; the constitution of his country, 

5 cum multis aliis. You may get a notion of some part of 

20 his expected duties by consulting the famous Tractate on 

Education addressed to Mr. Hartlib. 

All these things — these, or the desire of them — ^he is 
expected to instil, not by set lessons from professors, which 
'» he may charge in the bill, but at school-intervals, as he walks 
25 the streets, or saunters through green fields (those natural 
instructors) with his pupils. The least part of what is ex- 
pected from him is to be done in school-hours. He must 
insinuate knowledge at the mollia tempora fandi. He 
" must seize every occasion — the season of the year — the 
so time of the day — a passing cloud — a rainbow — a waggon 
of hay — a regiment of soldiers going by — to inculcate 
something useful. He can receive no pleasure from a 



134 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA 

casual glimpse of nature, but must catch at it as an object 
of instruction. He must interpret beauty into the pictur- 
esque. He cannot relish a beggar-man, or a gipsy, for 
thinking of the suitable improvement. Nothing comes to 
him, not spoiled by the sophisticating medium of moral uses . s 
The Universe — that Great Book, as it has been called — is 
to him indeed, to all intents and purposes, a book, out of 
which he is doomed to read tedious homilies to distasting ' 
schoolboys. — Vacations themselves are none to him, he is 
only rather worse off than before; for commonly he has lo 
some intrusive upper-boy fastened upon him at such times ; 
some cadet of a great family; some neglected lump of 
nobility, or gentry; that he must drag after him to the play, 
to the panorama, to Mr. Hartley's Orrery, to the Panopti- 
con, or into the country, to a friend's house, or his favorite is 
watering-place. Wherever he goes, this uneasy shadow 
attends him. A boy is at his board, and in his path, and 
in all his movements. He is boy-rid, sick of perpetual boy. 

Boys are capital fellows in their own way, among their 
mates; but they are unwholesome companions for grown 20 
people. The restraint is felt no less on the one side, than 
on the other. — Even a child, that ''plaything for an hour,"^ 
tires always. The noises of children, playing their own 
fancies — as I now hearken to them by fits, sporting on the 
green before my window, while I am engaged in these 25 
grave speculations at my neat suburban retreat at Shackle- 
well — by distance made more sweet — inexpressibly take 
from the labor of my task. It is like writing to music. 
They seem to modulate my periods. They ought at least 
to do so — for in the voice of that tender age there is a kind 30 
of poetry, far unlike the harsh prose-accents of man's con- 

1 Charles and Mary Lamb, Poetry for Children. 



i\ 



THE OLD AND THE NEW SCHOOLMASTER 135 

versation. — I should but spoil their sport, and diminish my 
own sympathy for them, by mingling in their pastime. 

I would not be domesticated all my days with a person 
of very superior capacity to my own — not, if I know myself 

5 at all, from any considerations of jealousy, or self-compari- 
son, for the occasional communion with such minds has 
constituted the fortune and felicity of my life — but the 
habit of too constant intercourse with spirits above you, 
instead of raising you, keeps you down. Too frequent 

10 doses of original thinking from others, restrain what lesser 
portion of that faculty you may possess of your own. You 
get entangled in another man's mind, even as you lose your- 
self in another man's grounds. You are walking with a 
tall varlet, whose strides out-pace yours to lassitude. The 

5 constant operation of such potent agency would reduce 
me, I am convinced, to imbecility. You may derive 
thoughts from others ; your way of thinking, the mould in 
which your thoughts are cast, must be your own. Intellect 
may be imparted, but not each man's intellectual frame. 

As little as I should wish to be always thus dragged 
upwards, as little (or rather still less) is it desirable to be 
stunted downwards by your associates. The trumpet does 
not more stun you by its loudness, than a whisper teases 
you by its provoking inaudibility. 

5 Why are we never quite at our ease in the presence of a 
schoolmaster? — because we are conscious that he is not 
quite at his ease in ours. He is awkward, and out of place, 
in the society of his equals. He comes like Gulliver from 
among his little people, and he cannot fit the stature of his 

understanding to yours. He cannot meet you on the square. 
He wants a point given him, like an indifferent whist-player. 
He is so used to teaching, that he wants to be teaching yoUo 



136 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA 

One of these professors, upon my complaining that these 
little sketches of mine were anything but methodical, and 
that I was unable to make them otherwise, kindly offered 
to instruct me in the method by which young gentlemen in 
his seminary were talight to compose English themes.— 
The jests of a schoolmaster are coarse, or thin. They 
do not tell out of school. He is under the restraint of a 
formal and didactive hypocrisy in company, as a clergyman 
is under a moral one. He can no more let his intellect 
loose in society, than the other can his inclinations.— He 
is forlorn among his coevals; his juniors cannot be his 
friends. 

"I take blame to myself," said a sensible man of this 
profession, writing to a friend respecting a youth who had 
quitted his school abruptly, *'that your nephew was not 
more attached to me. But persons in my situation are 
more to be pitied, than can well be imagined. We are 
surrounded by young, and, consequently, ardently affec- 
tionate hearts, but we can never hope to share an atom of 
their affections. The relation of master and scholar forbids 2. 
this. How 'pleasing this must he to you, how I envy your 
feelings, my friends will sometimes say to me, when they see 
young men, whom I have educated, return after some years' 
absence from school, their eyes shining with pleasure, while 
they shake hands with their old master, bringing a present 2^ 
of game to me, or a toy to my wife, and thanking me in the 
warmest terms for my care of their education. A holiday 
is begged for the boys; the house is a scene of happiness; 
I, only, am sad at heart. — This fine-spirited and warm- 
hearted youth, who fancies he repays, his master with grati- 30 
tude for the care of his boyish years — this young man — in 
the eight long years I watched over him with a parent's 



THE OLD AND THE NEW SCHOOLMASTER 137 

anxiety, never could repay me with one look of genuine 
feeling. He was proud, when I praised; he was submissive, 
when I reproved him; but he did never love me — and what 
he now mistakes for gratitude and kindness for me, is but a 
pleasant sensation, which all persons feel at revisiting the 
scene of their boyish hopes and fears; and the seeing on 
equal terms the man they were accustomed to look up 
to with reverence. My wife, too," this interesting corre- 
spondent goe-s on to say, "my once darling Anna, is the 
wife of a schoolmaster. — When I married her — knowing 
that the wife of a schoolmaster ought to be a busy notable 
creature, and fearing that my gentle Anna would ill supply 
the loss of my dear bustling mother, just then dead, who 
never sat still, was in every part of the house in a moment, 
and whom I was obliged sometimes to threaten to fasten 
down in a chair, to save her from fatiguing herself to death 
— I expressed my fears, that I was bringing her into a way 
of life unsuitable to her; and she, who loved me tenderly, 

[ promised for my sake to exert herself to perform the duties 
of her new situation. She promised, and she has kept her 
word. What wonders will not a woman's love perform? — ■ 
My house is managed with a propriety and decorum, 
unknown in other schools; my boys are w^ell-fed, look 

'healthy, and have every proper accommodation; and all 
this performed with a careful economy, that never descends 
to meanness. But I have lost my gentle, helpless Anna! — 
When we sit down to enjoy an hour of repose after the 
fatigue of the day, I am compelled to listen to what have 

"been her useful (and they are really useful) employments 
through the day, and what she proposes for her to-morrow's 
task. Her heart and her features are changed by the duties 
of her situation. To the boys, she never appears other 



138 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA 

than the master's wife, and she looks up to me as the boys* 
master; to whom all show of love and affection would be 
highly improper, and unbecoming the dignity of her situa- 
tion and mine. Yet this my gratitude forbids me to hint to 
her. For my sake she submitted to be this altered creature, 
and can I reproach her for it?" — For the communication 
of this letter, I am indebted to my cousin Bridget. 

MY RELATIONS. 

I AM arrived at that point of life, at which a man may 
account it a blessing, as it is a singularity, if he have either 
of his parents surviving. I have not that felicity — and 
sometimes think feelingly of a passage in BrowTie's Chris- 
tian Morals, where he speaks of a man that hath lived '{ 
sixty or seventy years in the world. 'In such a compass I 
of time," he says, "a man may have a close apprehension i 
what it is to be forgotten, when he hath lived to find none ii 
who could remember his father, or scarcely the friends of I 
his youth, and may sensibly see with what a face in no long J 
time Oblivion will look upon himself." | 

I had an aunt, a dear and good one. She was one whom ! 
single blessedness had soured to the world. She often J 
used to say, that I w^as the only thing in it which she loved ; 
and, when she thought I was quitting it, she grieved over 
me with mother^s tears. A partiality quite so exclusive my 
reason cannot altogether approve. She was from morning j 
till night poring over good books, and devotional exercises. 21 
Her favorite volumes were Thomas a Kempis, in Stan- j 
hope's Translation; and a Roman Catholic Prayer-Book, 
with the matins and complines regularly set down, — terms | 
which I was at that time too young to understand. She j 




MY RELATIONS 139 

rsisted in reading them, although admonished daily con- 
cerning their Papistical tendency; and went to church every 
Sabbath, as a good Protestant should do. These were the 
only books she studied ; though, I think, at one period of 
her life, she told me she had read with great satisfaction the 
"Adventures of an Unfortunate Young Nobleman." Find- 
ing the door of the chapel in Essex Street open one day — 
it was in the infancy of that heresy — she went in, liked the 
sermon, and the manner of worship, and frequented it at 

a intervals for some time after. She came not for doctrinal 
points, and never missed them. With some little asperities 
in her constitution, which I have above hinted at, she was 
a steadfast friendly being, and a fine old Christian. She 
was a woman of strong sense, and a shrewd mind — ex- 

5 traordinary at a repartee; one of the few occasions of her 
breaking silence — else she did not much value wit. The 
only secular employment I remember to have seen her 
engaged in, was, the splitting of French beans, and dropping 
them into a China basin of fair water. The odor of those 

» tender vegetables to this day comes back upon my sense, 
redolent of soothing recollections. Certainly it is the most 
delicate of culinary operations. 

Male aunts, as somebody calls them, I had none — to 
remember. By the uncle's side I may be said to have been 
born an orphan. Brother, or sister, I never had any — .to 
know them. A sister, I think, that should have been 
Elizabeth, died in both our infancies. What a comfort, or 
what a care, may I not have missed in her! — But I have 
cousins, sprinkled about in Hertfordshire — besides tivo, 
with whom 1 have been all my life in habits of the closest 
intimacy, and whom I may term cousins par excellence. 
These are James and Bridget Elia. They are older than 



140 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA 

myself by twelve, and ten, years ; and neither of them seems 
disposed, in matters of advice and guidance, to waive any 
of the prerogatives which primogeniture confers. May 
they continue still in the same mind; and when they shall 
be seventy-five, and seventy-three, years old (I cannot spare 
them sooner), persist in treating me in my grand climacteric 
precisely as a stripling or younger brother! 

James is an inexplicable cousin. Nature hath her unities, 
which not every critic can penetrate ; or, if we feel, we can-i 
not explain them. The pen of Yorick, and none since his, i 
could have drawn J. E. entire — those fine Shandean lights 
and shades, which make up his story. I must limp after in 
my poor antithetical manner, as the fates have given me 
grace and talent. J. E. then — to the eye of a common 
observer at least — seemeth made up of contradictory prin- t 
ciples. — ^The genuine child of impulse, the frigid philos- ' 
opher of prudence — the phlegm of my cousin's doctrine 
is invariably at war with his temperament, which is high 
sanguine. With always some fire-new project in his brain, 
J. E. is the systematic opponent of innovation, and crier- ^ 
down of everything that has not stood the test of age and 
experiment. With a hundred fine notions chasing one i 
another hourly in his fancy, he is startled at the least ap- "I 
proach to the romantic in others; and, determined by his 
own sense in everything, commends you to the guidance of 21 
common -sense on all occasions. — With a touch of the 
eccentric in all which he does, or says, he is only anxious 
that you should not commit yourself by doing anything 
absurd or singular. On my once letting slip at table, that 
I was not fond of -a certain popular dish, he begged me at »( 
any rate not to say so — for the world would think me mad. 
He disguises a passionate fondness for works of high art 



MY RELATIONS 141 

(whereof he hath amassed a choice collection), under the 
pretext of buying onlj to sell again — that his enthusiasm 
may give no encouragement to yours. Yet, if it were so, 
why does that piece of tender pastoral Dominichino hang 
» still by his wall? — is the ball of his sight much more dear 
to him? — or what picture-dealer can talk like him? 

Whereas mankind in general are observed to warp their 
speculative conclusions to the bent of their individual 
humors, his theories are sure to be in diametrical opposi- 
te tioh to his constitution. He is courageous as Charles of 
Sweden, upon instinct; chary of his person, upon principle, 
as a travelling Quaker. — He has been preaching up to me, 
all my life, the doctrine of bowing to the great — the neces- 
sity of forms, and manner, to a man's getting on in the 
5 world. He himself never aims at either, that I can dis- 
cover, — and has a spirit, that would stand upright in the 
presence of the Cham of Tartary. It is pleasant to hear 
him discourse of patience — extolling it as the truest wisdom 
— and to see him during the last seven minutes that his 
!o dinner is getting ready. Nature never ran up in her haste 
a more restless piece of workmanship than when she 
moulded this impetuous cousin — and Art never turned out 
a more elaborate orator than he can display himself to be, 
' upon his favorite topic of the advantages of quiet, and 
!5 contentedness in the state, whatever it be, that we are placed 
in. He is triumphant on this theme, when he has you safe 
in one of those short stages that ply for the western road, 
in a very obstructing manner, at the foot of John Murray's 
Street — ^where you get in when it is empty, and are expected 
to wait till the vehicle hath completed her just freight— 
a trying three-quarters of an hour to some people. He 
wonders at your fidgetiness — "where could we be better 



142 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA 

than we are, thus sitting, thus consulting f — "prefers, for 
his part, a state of rest to locomotion," — ^with an eye all the 
while upon the coachman — till at length, waxing out of all 
patience, at your want of it, he breaks out into a pathetic 
remonstrance at the fellow for detaining us so long over the 5 
time which he had professed, and declares peremptorily, 
that "the gentleman in the coach is determined to get out 
if he does not drive on that instant." 

-Very quick at inventing an argument, or detecting a 
sophistry, he is incapable of attending you in any chain of lo 
arguing. Indeed he makes wild work with logic; and 
seems to jump at most admirable conclusions by some 
process, not at all akin to it. Consonantly enough to this, 
he hath been heard to deny, upon certain occasions, that 
there exists such a faculty at all in man as reason; and is 
wondereth how man came first to have a conceit of it — 
enforcing his negation with all the might of reasoning he 
is master of. He has some speculative notions against 
laughter, and will maintain that laughing is not natural to 
Mm— when perad venture the next moment his lungs shall 20 
crow like Chanticleer.^ He says some of the best things in 
the world — and declareth that wit is his aversion. It was 
he who said, upon seeing the Eton boys at play in their 
grounds — What a pity to think, that these fine ingenuous lads 
in a few years will all be changed into frivolous Members of 25 
Parliament! 

His youth was fiery, glowing, tempestuous — and in age 
he discovered no symptom of cooling. This is that which 
I admire in him. I hate people who meet Time half-way. 
I am for no compromise with that inevitable spoiler. 30 
While he lives, J. E. will take his swing. — It does me good, 

1 As You Like It, II., vii., 30. 



MY RELATIONS 143 

as I walk towards the street of my daily avocation, on some 
fine May morning, to meet him marching in a quite opposite 
direction, with a jolly handsom^ presence, and shining 
sanguine face, that indicates some purchase in his eye — a 

3 Claude — or a Hobbima — for much of his enviable leisure is 
consumed at Christie's, and Phillips's — or where not, to 

, pick up pictures, and such gauds. On these occasions he 
mostly stoppeth me, to read a short lecture on the advantage 
a person like me possesses above himself, in having his time 

10 occupied with business which he must do — assureth me that 
he often feels it hang heavy on his hands — wishes he had 
fewer holidays — and goes off — ^Westward Ho ! — chanting a 
tune to Pall Mall — perfectly convinced that he has con- 
vinced me — while I proceed in my opposite direction 

15 tuneless. 

It is pleasant again to see this Professor of Indifference 
doing the honors of his new purchase, when he has fairly 
housed it. You must view it in every light, till he has found 
the best— placing it at this distance, and at that, but always 

20 suiting the focus of your sight to his own. You must spy at 
it through your fingers; to catch the aerial perspective — 
though you assure him that to you the landscape shows 
much more agreeable without that artifice. Woe be to the 
luckless wight, who does not only not respond to his rapture, 

25 but who should drop an unseasonable intimation of pre- 
ferring one of his anterior bargains to the present! — The 
last is always his best hit — his "Cynthia of the minute."^ — 
Alas ! how many a mild Madonna have I known to come in 
— a Raphael! — keep its ascendency for a few brief moons — 

30 then, after certain intermedial degradations, from the front 
drawing-room to the back gallery, thence to the dark parlor, 

1 Pope, Moral Essays, III., 20. 



144 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA 

— adopted in turn bj each of the Carracci, under successive 
lowering ascriptions of filiation, mildly breaking its fall — 
consigned to the oblivious lumber-room, go out at last a 
Lucca Giordano, or plain Carlo Maratti! — which things 
when I beheld — masing upon the chances and mutabilities 5 
of fate below — hath made me to reflect upon the altered 
condition of great personages, or that woful queen of 
Richard the Second— 

set forth in pomp, 

She came adorned hither like sweet May, le 

Sent back like Hallowmas or shortest day.* 

With great love for you, J. E. hath but a limited sympathy 
with what you feel or do. He lives in a world of his o^\ii, 
and makes slender guesses at what passes in your mind. 
He never pierces the marrow of your habits. He will tell is 
an old-established playgoer, that Mr.Such-a-one,of So-and- 
so (naming one of the theatres), is a very lively comedian — - 
as a piece of news ! He advertised me but the other day 
of some pleasant green lanes which he had found out for 
me, knowing me to he a great walker, in my own immediate 20 
vicinity — who have haunted the identical spot any time 
these twenty years! — He has not much respect for that 
class of feelings which goes by the name of sentimental. 
He applies the definition of real evil to bodily suffering 
exclusively — and rejecteth all others as imaginary. He is 25 
affected by the sight or the bare supposition of a creature in 
pain, to a degree which I have never witnessed out of 
womankind. A constitutional acuten^ss to this class of 
sufferings, may in part account for this. The animal tribe 
in particular he taketh under his especial protection. A 30 

1 Richard II., V., i., 79ff. 



MY RELATIONS 145 

broken-winded or spur-galled horse is sure to find an 
advocate in him. An over-loaded ass is his client for ever. 
He is the apostle to the brute kind — the never-failing friend 
of those who have none to care for them. The contempla- 

s tion of a lobster boiled, or eels skinned alive, will wring him 
so, that ''all for pity he could die."^ It will take the 
savor from his palate, and the rest from his pillow, for 
days and nights. With the intense feeling of Thomas 
Clarkson, he wanted only the steadiness of pursuit, and 

10 unity of purpose, of that "true yoke-fellow with Time,"^ to 
have effected as much for the Animal, as he hath done for 
the Negro Creation. But my uncontrollable cousin is but 
imperfectly formed for purposes which demand co-opera- 
tion. He cannot wait. His amelioration -plans must be 

15 ripened in a day. For this reason he has cut but an equivo- 
cal figure in benevolent societies, and combinations for the 
alleviation of human sufferings. His zeal constantly makes 
him to outrun, and put out, his coadjutors. He thinks of 
relieving, — ^while they think of debating. He was black- 

20 balled out of a society for the Relief of . . . because 
the fervor of his humanity toiled beyond the formal appre- 
hension, and creeping processes, of his associates. I shall 
always consider this distinction as a patent of nobility of 
the Elia family! 

25 Do I mention these seeming inconsistencies to smile at, 
or upbraid, my unique cousin? Marry, heaven, and all 
good manners, and the understanding that should be be- 
tween kinsfolk, forbid! — With all the strangeness of this 
strangest of the Elias — I would not have him in one jot or 

30 tittle other than he is; neither would I barter or exchange 



1 Spenser, Faerie; Queene, I., iii., 1. 

2 Wordsworth, Sonnet to Clarksox. 



146 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA 

my wild kinsman for the most exact, regular, and every- 
way consistent kinsman breathing. 

In my next, reader, I may perhaps give you some account 
of my cousin Bridget — if you are not already surfeited with 
cousins^ — and take you by the hand, if you are willing to go 5 
with us, on an excursion which we made a summer or two 
since, in search of more cousins — 

Through the green plains of pleasant Hertfordshire.^ 

MACKERY END, IN HERTFORDSHIRE. 

Bridget Elia has been my housekeeper for many a long 
year. I have obligations to Bridget, extending beyond the ic 
period of memory. We house together, old bachelor 
alid maid, in a sort of double singleness ; with such tolerable 
comfort, upon the whole, that I, for one, find myself in 
no sort of disposition to go out upon the mountains, with 
the rash king's offspring, to bewail my celibacy. We agree 15 
pretty well in our tastes and habits — ^yet so, as 'Svith a 
difference."^ We are generally in harmony, with occasional 
bickerings — as it should be among near relations. Our 
sympathies are rather understood, than expressed; and 
once, upon my dissembling a tone in my voice more kind 20 
than ordinary, my cousin burst into tears, and complained 
that I was altered. We are both great readers in different 
directions. While I am hanging over (for the thousandth 
time) some passage in old Burton, or one of his strange 
contemporaries, she is abstracted in some modem tale, or 25 
adventure, whereof our common reading-table is daily fed 
with assiduously fresh supplies. Narrative teases me. I 

1 Charles Lamb, Sonnet, 1795. 

2 Hamlet, IV., v., 183. 



MACKERY END, IN HERTFORDSHIRE 147 

have little concern in the progress of events. She must 
have a story, — ^well, ill or indifferently told — so there be life 
stirring in it, and plenty of good or evil accidents. The 

- fluctuations of fortune in fiction — and almost in real life — 

5 have ceased to interest, or operate but dully upon me. 
Out-of-the-way humors and opinions — heads with some 
diverting twist m them — the oddities of authorship please 
me most. My cousin has a native disrelish of anything 
that sounds odd or bizarre. Nothing goes down with her 

10 that is quaint, irregular, or out of the road of common 
sympathy. She ''holds Nature more clever."^ I can pardon 
her blindness to the beautiful obliquities of the Religio 
Medici; but she must apologise to me for certain dis- 
respectful insinuations, which she has been pleased to 

15 throw out latterly, touching the intellectuals of a dear 
favorite of mine, of the last century but one — the thrice 
noble, chaste, and virtuous, — ^but again somewhat fantas- 
tical and original-brained, generous Margaret Newcastle. 
It has been the lot of my cousin, oftener perhaps than I 

20 could have wished, to have had for her associates and mine, 
free-thinkers — leaders, and disciples, of novel philosophies 
and systems; but she neither wrangles with, nor accepts, 
their opinions. That which was good and venerable to 
her, when she was a child, retains its authority over her 

25 mind still. She never juggles or plays tricks with her 
understanding. 

We are both of us inclined to be a little too positive; 
and I have observed the result of our disputes to be almost 
uniformly this — that in matters of fact, dates, and circum^ 

30 stances, it turns out, that I was in the right, and my cousin 
in the wrong. But where we have differed upon moral 

1 Gay, Epitaph of Byewords. 



148 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA 

points; upon something proper to be done, or let alone; 
whatever heat of opposition, or steadiness of conviction, I 
set out with, I am sure always in the long run, to be brought 
over to her way of thinking. 

I must touch upon the foibles of my kinswoman with a 5 
gentle hand, for Bridget does not like to be told of her 
faults. She hath an awkward trick (to say no worse of it) 
of reading in company: at which times she will answer yes 
or no to a question, without fully miderstanding its purport 
■ — which is provoking, and derogatory in the highest degree 10 
to the dignity of the putter of the said question. Her 
presence of mind is equal to the most pressing trials of 
life, but will sometimes desert her upon trifling occaeior.s. 
When the purpose requires it, and is a thing of moment, 
she can speak to it greatly; but in matters which are not 15 
stuff of the conscience,^ she hath been known sometimes to 
let slip a word less seasonably. 

Her education in youth was not much attended to; and 
she happily missed all that train of female garniture, which 
passe th by the name of accomplishments. She was tumbled 20 
earl}^, by accidert or design, into a spacious closet of good 
old English reading, without much selection or prohibition, 
and browsed at will upon that fair and wholesome pastur- 
age. Had I twenty girls they should be brought up exactly 
in this fashion. I know not whether their chance in wed- 25 
lock might not be diminished by it; but I can answer for it, 
that it makes (if the worst come to the worst) most incom- 
parable old maids. 

In a season of distress, she is the truest comforter; but 
in the teasing accidents, and minor perplexities, which do 30 
not call out the will to meet them, she sometimes maketh 

1 Othello, I:, ii., 2. 



MACKEE^Y END, IN HERTFORDSHIRE 149 

matters worse by an excess of participation. If she does 
not always divide your trouble, upon the pleasanter oc- 
casions of life she is sure always to treble your satisfaction. 
She is excellent to be at play with, or upon a visit; but best, 

5 when she goes a journey with you. 

We made an excursion together a few summers since, into 
Hertfordshire, to beat up the quarters of some of our less- 
known relations in that fine com country. 

The oldest thing I remember is Mackery End; or 

10 Mackarel End, as it is spelt, perhaps more properly, in some 
old maps of Hertfordshire; a farm-house, — delightfully 
situated within a gentle walk froni Wheathampstead. I 
can just remember having been there, on a visit to a great- 
aunt, when I was a child under the care of Bridget; who, as 

15 I have said, is older than myself by some ten years. I wish 
that I could throw into a heap the remainder of our joint 
existences, that we might share them in equal division. 
But that is impossible. The house was at that time in the 
occupation of a substantial yeoman, who had married my 

20 grandmother's sister. His name was Gladman. My grand- 
mother was a Bruton, married to a Field. The Gladmans 
and the Brutons are still flourishing in that part of the 
county, but the Fields are almost extinct. More than forty 
years have elapsed since the visit I speak of; and, for the 

25 greater portion of that period, we had lost sight of the 
other two branches also. Who or what sort of persons 
inherited Mackery End — kindred or strange folk — we were 
afraid almost to conjecture, but determined some day to 
explore. 

30 By somewhat a circuitous route, taking the noble park at 
Luton in our way from Saint Alban's, we arrived at the spot 
of our anxious curiosity about noon. The sight of the eld 



150 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA 

farm-house, though every trace of it was effaced from my 
recollection, affected me with a pleasure which I had not 
experienced for many a year. For though I had forgotten 
it, we had never forgotten being there together, and we 
had been talking about Mackery End all our lives, till s 
memory on my part became mocked with a phantom of 
itself, and I thought I knew the aspect of a place, which, 
when present, O how unlike it was to that, which I had 
conjured up so many times instead of it! 

Still the air breathed balmily about it; the season was in lo 
the "heart of June,"^ and I could say with the poet. 

But thou, that. didst appear so fair 

To fond Imagination, 
Dost rival in the light of day 

Her delicate creation!^ 15 

Bridget's was more a waking bliss^ than mine, for she 
easily remembered her old acquaintance again — some 
altered features, of course, a little grudged at. At first, 
indeed, she was ready to disbelieve for joy; but the scene 
soon reconfirmed itself in her affections — and she traversed 20 
every outpost of the old mansion, to the wood-house, the 
orchard, the place where the pigeon-house had stood (house 
and birds were alike flown) — with a breathless impatience 
of recognition, which was more pardonable perhaps than 
decorous at the age of fifty odd. But Bridget in some 25. 
things is behind her years. 

The only thing left was to get into the house — and that 
was a difficulty which to me singly would have been in- 
surmountable: for I am terribly shy in making myself 
knov^Ti to strangers and out-of-date kinsfolk. Love, 3o 

1 Ben Jonson, Epithalamion. 

2 Wordsworth. [Yarrow Visited]. (L.) 

3 CoMus, 263. 



MACKERY END, IN HERTFORDSHIRE 151 

jtronger than scruple, winged my cousin in without me ; but 
jhe soon returned with a creature that might have sat t@ a 
sculptor for the image of Welcome. It was the youngest of 
[the Gladmans; who, by marriage with a Bruton, had be- 
come mistress of the old mansion. A comely brood are the 
Brutons. Six of them, females, were noted as the hand- 
somest young women in the county. But this adopted 
Bruton, in my mind, was better than they all — more comely. 
She was born too late to have remembered me. She just 

10 recollected in early life to have had her cousin Bridget once 
pointed out to her, climbing a stile. But the name of 
kindred, and of cousinship, was enough. Those slender 
ties, that prove slight as gossamer in the rending atmos- 
phere of a metropolis, bind faster, as we found it, in hearty, 

15 homely, loving Hertfordshire. In five minutes we were as 
thoroughly acquainted as if we had been born and bred up 
together; were familiar, even to the calling each other by 
our Christian names. So Christians should call one another. 
To have seen Bridget, and her — it was like the meeting of 

20 the two scriptural cousins!^ There was a grace and dig- 
nity, an amplitude of form and stature, answering to her 
mind, in this farmer's wife, which would have shined in a 
palace — or so we thought it. We were made welcome by 
husband and wife equally — ^we, and our friend that was 

25 with us. — I had almost forgotten him— but B. F. will not 
so soon forget that meeting, if peradventure he shall read 
this on the far-distant shores where the Kangaroo haunts. 
The fatted calf was made ready, or rather was already so, 
as if in anticipation of our coming; and, after an appro- 

80 priate glass of native wine, never let me forget with what 
honest pride this hospitable cousin made us proceed to 
1 Luke, i., 40. 



152 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA 

Wheathampstead, to introduce us (as some new-found 
raritj) to her mother and sister Gladmans, who did indeed 
know something more of us, at a time when she almost knew 
nothing. — With what corresponding kindness we were re- 
ceived by them also — how Bridget s memory, exalted by the 
occasion, warmed into a thousand half -obliterated recol- 
lections of things and persons, to my utter astonishment, 
and her own — and to the astoundment of B. F. who sat by, 
almost the only thing that was not a cousin the re ,^ — old 
effaced images of more than half -forgotten names and cir- 
cumstances still crowding back upon her, as words written 
in lemon come out upon exposure to a friendly warmth, — 
when I forget all this, then may my country cousins forget 
me; and Bridget no more remember, that in the days of 
weakling infancy I was her tender charge — as I have been is 
her care in foolish manhood since — in those pretty pastoral 
walks, long ago, about Mackery End, in Hertfordshire. 

IMPERFECT SYMPATHIES. 

I am of a constitution so general, that it consorts and sym- 
pathiseth with all things; I have no antipathy, or rather idiosyn- 
crasy, in anything. Those national repugnances do not touch 2e 
me, nor do I behold with prejudice the French, Italian, Spaniard 
or Dutch. — Religio Medici. 

That the author of the Religio Medici, mounted upon the 
airy stilts of abstraction, conversant about notional and 
conjectural essences; in whose categories of Being the 25 
possible took the upper hand of the actual; should have 
overlooked the impertinent individualities of such poor 
concretions as mankind, is not much to be admired. It is 
rather to be wondered at, that in the genus of animals he 
should have condescended to distinguish that species at all. so 



I 1 



IMPERFECT SYMPATHIES 153 

For myself — earth-bound and fettered to the scene of my 
activities, — 

Standing on earth, not rapt above the sky,^ 

I confess that I do feel the differences of mankind, national 
or individual, to an unhealthy excess. I can look with no 
indiiferent eye upon things or persons. Whatever is, is to 
me a matter of taste or distaste ; or when once it becomes 
indifferent, it begins to be disrelishing. I am, in plainer 
words, a bundle of prejudices — made up of likings and 

disiikings — the veriest thrall to sympathies, apathies, antip- 
athies. In a certain sense, I hope it may be said of me 
that I am a lover of my species. I can feel for all indiffer- 
ently, but I cannot feel towards all equally. The more 
purely-English word that expresses sympathy will better 

15 explain my meaning. I can be a friend to a worthy man, 
who upon another account cannot be my mate or fellow, 
I cannot like all people alike .^ 

1 Paradise Lost, VII., 23. 

2 I would be understood as confining myself to the subject of imper- 
fect sympathies. To nations or classes of men there can be no direct 
antipathy. There may be individuals born and constellated so opposite 
to another individual nature that the same sphere cannot hold them. 
I have met with my moral antipodes, and can believe the story of two 
I)ersons meeting (who never saw one another before in their lives) and 
Instantly fighting. 

-We by proof find there should be 



'Twixt man and man such an antipathy. 
That though he can show no just reason why 
For any former wrong or injury, 
Can neither find a blemish in his fame, 
Nor aught in face or feature justly blame, 
Can challenge or accuse him of no evil, 
Yet notwithstanding hates him as a devil. 

The lines are from old Heywood's "Hierarchie of Angels," and he 
subjoins a curious story in confirmation of a Spaniard who attempted 
to assassinate a King Ferdinand of Spain, and being put to the rack 
could give no other reason for the deed but an inveterate antipatny 
which he had taken to the first sight of the King. 

-The cause to which that act compell'd him 



Was, he ne'er loved him since he first beheld him. (L.) 



154 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA 

I have been trying all my life to like Scotchmen, and am 
obliged to desist from the experiment in despair. They 
cannot like me — and in truth, I never knew one of that 
nation who attempted to do it. There is something more 
plain and ingenuous in their mode of proceeding. We 5 
know one another at first sight. There is an order of 
imperfect intellects (under which mine must be content to 
rank) which in its constitution is essentially anti-Caledonian. 
The owners of the sort of faculties I allude to, have minds 
rather suggestive than comprehensive. They have no lo 
pretences to much clearness or precision in their ideas, or 
in their manner of expressing them. Their intellectual 
wardrobe (to confess fairly) has few whole pieces in it. 
They are content with fragments and scattered pieces of 
Truth. She presents no full front to them — a feature or is 
side-face at the most. Hints and glimpses,germs and crude 
essays at a system, is the utmost they pretend to. They 
beat up a little game peradventure — and leave it to knottier 
heads, more robust constitutions, to run it down. The light 
that lights them is not steady and polar, but mutable and 20 
shifting: waxing, and again waning. Their conversation is 
accordingly. They will throw out a random word in or out 
of season, and be content to let it pass for what it is worth. 
They cannot speak always as if they were upon their oath — 
but must be miderstood, speaking or writing, with some 25 
abatement. They seldom wait to mature a proposition, 
but e'en bring it to market in the green ear. They delight to 
impart their defective discoveries, as they arise, without 
waiting for their full development. They are no system- 
atisers, and would but err more by attempting it. Their so 
minds, as I said before, are suggestive merely. The brain , • 
of a true Caledonian (if I am not mistaken) is constituted 



IMPERFECT SYMPATHIES 155 

upon quite a different plan. His Minerva is born in pan- 
oply. You are never admitted to see his ideas in their 
growth — if, indeed, they do grow, and are not rather put 
together upon principles of clock-work. You never catch 

5 his mind in an undress. He never hints or suggests any- 
thing, but unlades his stock of ideas in perfect order ard 
completeness. He brings his total wealth into company, 
and gravely unpacks it. His riches are always about him. 
He never stoops to catch a glittering something in your 

10 presence, to share it with you, before he quite knows 
whether it be true touch or not. You cannot cry halves 
to anything that he finds. He does not find, but bring. You 
never witness his first apprehension of a thing. His under- 
standing is always at its meridian — ^you never see the first 

15 dawn, the early streaks. — He has no falterings of self-sus- 
picion. Surmises, guesses, misgivings, half -in tuitions, semi- 
consciousness, partial illuminations, dim instincts, embryo 
conceptions, have no place in his brain, or vocabulary. The 
twilight of dubiety never falls upon him. Is he orthodox — 

20 he has no doubts. Is he an infidel — he has none either. Be- 
tween the affirmative and the negative there is no border- 
land with him. You cannot hover with him upon the con- 
fines of truth, or wander in the maze of a probable argu- 
ment. He always keeps the path. You cannot make excur- 

25 sions with him — for he sets you right. ' His taste never fluc- 
tuates. His morality never abates. He cannot compromise, 
or understand middle actions. There can be but a right and 
a wrong. His conversation is as a book. His affirmations 
have the sanctity of an oath. You must speak upon the 
square with him. He stops a metaphor like a suspected 
person in an enemy's country. ^'A healthy book!" — said 
one of his countrymen to me, who had ventured to give 



30 



156 . THE ESSAYS OF ELIA 

that appellation to John Buncle — "did I catch rightly what 
you said? I have heard of a man in health, and of a 
healthy state of body, but I do not see how that epithet can 
be properly applied to a book." Above all, you must beware 
of indirect expressions before a Caledonian. Clap an ; 
extinguisher upon your irony, if you are unhappily blest 
with a vein of it. Remember you are upon your oath. Ig 
have a print of a graceful female after Leonardo da Vinci, 

which I was showing off to Mr. . After he had 

examined it minutely, I ventured to ask him how he liked ic 
MY BEAUTY (a fooHsh name it goes by among my friends)— 
when he very gravely assured me, that "he had consider- 
able respect for my character and talents" (so he was 
pleased to say), "but had not given himself much thought 
about the degree of my personal pretensions." The mis- 15 
conception staggered me, but did not seem much to dis- 
concert him.— Persons of this nation are particularly fond 
of affirming a truth— which nobody doubts. They do not 
so properly affirm, as annunciate it. They do indeed 
appear to have such a love of truth (as if, like virtue, it 20 
were valuable for itself) that all truth becomes equally 
valuable, whether the proposition that contains it be new or 
old, disputed, or such as is impossible to become a subject 
of disputation. I was present not long since at a party of 
North Britons, where a son of Burns was expected; and 25 
happened to drop a silly expression (in my South British 
way), that I wished it were the father instead of the son— 
when four of them started up at once to inform me, that 
''that was impossible, because he was dead." An im- 
practicable wish, it seems, was more than they could con- 30 
ceiye. Swift has hit off this part of their character, namely, 
their love of truth, in his biting way, but with an illiberalitv 



IMPERFECT SYMPATHIES 157 

that necessarily confines the passage to the margin.^ The 
tediousness of these people is certainly provoking. I won- 
der if they ever tire one another! — In my early life I had a 
passionate fondness for the poetry of Burns. I Jtiave some- 

5 times foolishly hopt.d to ingratiate myself with his country- 
men by expressing it. But I have always found that a true 
Scot resents your admiration of his compatriot, even more 
than he would your contempt of him. The latter he im- 
putes to your ^'imperfect acquaintance with many of the 

10 words which he uses;" and the same objection makes it a 
presumption in you to suppose that you can admire him. — 
Thomson they seem to have forgotten. Smollett they have 
neither forgotten nor forgiven for his delineation of Rory 
and his companion, upon their first introduction to our 

.5 metropolis. — Speak of Smollett as a great genius, and they 

;" will retort upon you Hume's Plistory compared with his 
Continuation of it. What if the historian had continued 
Humphrey Clinker? 

I have, in the abstract, no disrespect for Jews. They are 

a piece of stubborn antiquity, compared with which 
Stonehenge is in its nonage. They date beyond the 
pyramids. But I should not care to be in habits of familiar 
intercourse with any of that nation. I confess that I have 
not the nerves to enter their synagogues. Old prejudices 

5 cling about me. I cannot shake off the story of Hugh of 
Lincoln. Centuries of injury, contempt, and hate, on the 
one side, — of cloaked revenge, dissimulation, and hate, on 

1 "There are some people who think they sufficiently acquit them- 
selves, and entertain their company, with relating facts of no con- 
sequence, not at all out of the road of such common incidents as happen 
everyday ; and this I have observed more frequently among the Scots 
than any other nation, who are very careful not to omit the minutest 
circumstances of tim^e or place ; which kind of discourse, if it were not 
a little relieved by the uncouth terms and phrases, as well as accent and 
gesture peculiar to that country, would be hardly tolerable." — Hints 
toward an Essay on Conversation. (L.) 



158 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA 

the other, between our and their fathers, must, and ought, 
to affect the blood of the children. I cannot believe it can 
run clearly and kindly yet; or that a few fine words, such as 
candor, liberality, the light of a nineteenth century, can 
close up the breaches of so deadly a disunion. A Hebrew 
is nowhere congenial to me. He is least distasteful on 
'Change — ^for the mercantile spirit levels all distinctions, as 
are all beauties in the dark. I boldly confess I do not 
relish the approximation of Jew and Christian, which has 
become so fashionable. The reciprocal endearments have, lo 
to me, something hypocritical and unnatural in them. I do 
not like to see the Church and Synagogue kissing and con- 
geeing in awkward postures of an affected civility. If they 
are converted, why do they not come over to us altogether? 
Why keep up a form of separation, when the life of it has is 
fled? If they can sit with us at table, why do they keck at 
our cookery? I do not understand these half convertites. 
Jews christianizing — Christians judaizing — puzzle me. I 
like fish or flesh. A moderate Jew is a more confounding 
piece of anomaly than a wet Quaker. The spirit of the 2a 

synagogue is essentially separative. B would have 

been more in keeping if he had abided by the faith of his 
forefathers. There is a fine scorn in his face, which nature 

meant to be of Christians. The Hebrew spirit is strong 

in him, in spite of his proselytism. He cannot conquer the 29 
Shibboleth.^ How it breaks out, when he sings, ''The 
Children of Israel passed through the Red Sea!"^ The 
auditors, for the moment, are as Egyptians to him, and he 
rides over our necks in triumph. There is no mistaking 
him. B has a strong expression of sense in his coun- sc 

1 Judges, xii., 4-6. 

2 Handel's Oratorio Israel in Egypt. 



IMPERFECT SYMPATHIES 159 

tenance, and it is confirmed by his singing. The founda- 
tion of his vocal excellence is sense. He sings with under- 
standing, as Kemble delivered dialogue. He would sing the 
Commandments, and give an appropriate character to each 
prohibition. His nation, in general, have not over-sensible 
countenances. How should they? — but you seldom see 
a silly expression among them. Gain, and the pursuit 
of gain, sharpen a man's visage. I neverv heard of an 
idiot being born among them. — Some admire the Jewish 

female physiognomy. I admire it — but with trembling. 
JaeP had those full dark inscrutable eyes. 

In the Negro countenance you will often meet with 
strong traits of benignity. I have felt yearnings of tender- 
ness towards some of these faces — or rather masks — that 

5 have looked out kindly upon one in casual encounters in 
the streets and highways. I love what Fuller beautifully 
calls — these '^images of God cut in ebony."^ But I should 
not like to associate with them, to share my meals and my 
good-nights with them — because they are black. 

I love Quaker ways, and Quaker worship. I venerate 
the Quaker principles. It does me good for the rest of the 
day when I meet any of their people in my path. When I 
am ruffled or disturbed by any occurrence, the sight, or 
quiet voice of a Quaker, acts upon me as a ventilator, 
{'5 lightening the air, and taking off a load from the bosom. 
But I cannot like the Quakers (as Desdemona would say) 
"to live with them."^ I am all over sophisticated — with 
humors, fancies, craving hourly sympathy. I must have 
books, pictures, theatres, chit-chat, scandal, jokes, ambigui- 



1 Judges, iv. 

2 Fuller, Holy State, II,, xx. 

3 Othello, I., iii., 249. 



^ 



160 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA ' 

ties, and a thousand whim-whams, which their simpler 
taste can do without. I should starve at their primitive 
banquet. My appetites are too high for the salads which 
(according to Evelyn) Eve dressed for the angel, my gusto 
too excited 

To sit a guest with Daniel at his pulse. ^ 

The indirect answers which Quakers are often found to 
return to a question put to them may be explained, I think, 
without the vulgar assumption, that they are more given to 
evasion and equivocating than other people. They natu- i 
rally look to their words more carefully, and are more cau- 
tious of committing themselves. They have a peculiar char- 
acter to keep up on this head. They stand in a manner upon 
their veracity. A Quaker is by law exempted from taking 
an oath. The custom of resorting to an oath in extreme i 
cases, sanctified as it is by all religious antiquity, is apt (it 
must be confessed) to introduce into the laxer sort of minds 
the notion of two kinds of truth — the one applicable to the 
solemn affairs of justice, and the other to the common pro- 
ceedings of daily intercourse. As truth bound upon the 2g 
conscience by an oath can be but truth, so in the common 
affirmations of the shop and the market-place a latitude is 
expected and conceded upon questions wanting this solemn 
covenant. Something less than truth satisfies. It is com- 
mon to hear a person say, "You do not expect me to speak 25 
as if I were upon my oath." Hence a great deal of incor- 
rectness and inadvertency, short of falsehood, creeps into 
ordinary conversation; and a kind of secondary or laic- 
truth is tolerated, where clergy-truth — oath-truth, by the 
nature of the circumstances, is not required. A Quaker 30 

1 Paradise Regained, II., 278. 



IMPERFECT SYMPATHIES 161 

knows none of this distinction. His simple affirmation 
being received^ upon the most sacred occasions, without 
any further test, stamps a value upon the words which he is 
to use upon the most indifferent topics of life. He looks 
5 to them, naturally, with more severity. You can have of 
him no more than his word. He knows, if he is caught 
tripping in a casual expression, he forfeits, for himself, at 
least, his claim to the invidious exemption. He knows 
that his syllables are weighed — and how far a consciousness 

10 of this particular watchfulness, exerted against a person, 
has a tendency to produce indirect answers, and a diverting 
of the question by honest means, might be illustrated, and 
the practice justified, by a more sacred example^ than is 
proper to be adduced upon this occasion. The admirable 

115 presence of mind, which is notorious in Quakers upon all 
contingencies, might be traced to this imposed self -watch- 
fulness — if it did not seem rather an humble and secular 
scion of that old stock of religious constancy, which never 
bent or faltered, in the Primitive Friends, or gave way to 

ao the winds of persecution, to the violence of judge or 
accuser, under trials and racking examinations. "You 
will never be the wiser, if I sit here answering your ques- 
tions till midnight," said one of those upright Justicers to 
Penn, who had been putting law-cases with a puzzling 

;25 subtlety. "Thereafter as the answers may be,"^ retorted the 
Quaker. The astonishing composure of this people is 
sometimes ludicrously displayed in lighter instances. — I 
was traveling in a stage-coach with three male Quakers, 
buttoned up in the straightest non-conformity of their sect. 

,30 We stopped to bait at Andover, where a meal, partly tea 

1 Mark, xii., 13-17; Luke, xx., i-8. J 

2 Of. II. Henry IV.. iii., 2. 56. 



162 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA 

apparatus, partly supper, was set before us. My friends 
confined themselves to the tea-table. I in my way took 
supper. When the landlady brought in the bill, the eldest 
of my companions discovered that she had charged for 
both meals. This was resisted. Mine hostess was very 
clamorous and positive. Some mild arguments were used 
on the part of the Quakers, for which the heated mind of 
the good lady seemed by no means a fit recipient. The 
guard came in with his usual peremptory notice. The 
Quakers pulled out their money, and formally tendered it 
— so much for tea, — I in humble imitation, tendering mine 
—for the supper which I had taken. She would not relax 
in her demand. So they all three quietly put up their 
silver, as did myself, and marched out of the room, the 
eldest and gravest going first, with myself closing up the i 
rear, who thought I could not do better than follow the 
example of such grave and warrantable personages. We 
got in. The steps went up. The coach drove off. The 
murmurs of mine hostess, not very indistinctly or ambigu- 
ously pronounced, became after a time inaudible— and now 2 j 
my conscience, which the whimsical scene had for a while 
suspended, beginning to give some twitches, I waited, in 
the hope that some justification would be offered by these 
serious people for the seeming injustice of their conduct. , 
To my great surprise, not a syllable was dropped on the 2J 
subject. They sate as mute as at a meeting. At length 
the eldest of them broke silence, by inquiring of his next 
neighbor, "Hast thee heard how indigos go at the India 
House?" and the question operated as a soporific on my 
moral feeling as far as Exeter. 30 



BENCHERS OF THE INNER TEMPLE l63 

THE OLD BENCHERS OF THE INNER TEMPLE. 

I WAS born, and passed the first seven years of my life in 
the Temple. Its church, its halls, its gardens, its fountain, 
its river, I had almost said— for in those young years, what 
was this king of rivers to me but a stream that watered our 
pleasant places? these are of my oldest recollections. I 
repeat, to this day, no verses to myself more frequently, or 
with kindlier emotion, than those of Spenser, where he 
speaks of this spot. 

There when they came, whereas those bricky towers, 
The which on Themmes brode aged back doth ride, 
Where now the studious lawyers have their bowers, 
There whylome wont the Tenipler knights to bide, 
Till they decayed through pride.^ 

Indeed, it is the most elegant spot in the metropolis. 
5 What a transition for a countryman visiting London for the 
first time— the passing from the crowded Strand or Fleet 
Street, by unexpected avenues, into its magnificent ample 
squares, its classic green recesses ! What a cheerful, liberal 
look hath that portion of it, which, from three sides, over- 
looks the greater garden: that goodly pile 

Of building strong, albeit of Paper hight,^ 

confronting, with massy contrast, the lighter, older, morf 
' fantastically shrouded one, named of Harcourt, with the 
cheerful Crown-office Row (place of my kindly engendure), 
5 right opposite the stately stream, which washes the garden- 
foot with her yet scarcely trade-polluted waters, and seems 
but just weaned from her Twickenham Naiades ! a man 
would give something to have been born in such places. 



1 Prothalamion, St. 

2 See note. 



164 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA 

What a collegiate aspect has that fine Elizabethan hall, 
-where the fountain plays, which I have made to rise and 
fall, how many times! to the astoundment of the young 
urchins, my contemporaries, who, not being able to guess 
at Its recondite machinery, were almost tempted to hail the 
wondrous work as magic! What an antique air had the 
now almost effaced sun-dials, with their moral inscriptions 
seeming coevals with that Time which they measured, and 
to take their revelations of its flight immediately from 
heaven, holding correspondence with the fountain of light! k 
How would the dark line steal imperceptibly on, watched 
by the eye of childhood, eager to detect its movement, 
never catched, nice as an evanescent cloud, or the, first 
arrests of sleep! 

Ah! yet doth beauty like a dial-hand 15 

Steal from his figure, and no pace perceived I^ 
What a dead thing is a clock, with its ponderous em- 
bowelments of lead and brass, its pert or solemn dulness of 
communication, compared with the simple altar-like 
structure, and silent heart-language of the old dial! It 20 
stood as the garden god of Christian gardens. Why is it 
almost everywhere vanished? If its business-use be 
superseded by more elaborate inventions, its moral uses, 
its beauty, might have pleaded for its continuance. It 
spoke of moderate labors, of pleasures not protracted 25 
after sunset, of temperance, and good hours. It was the 
primitive clock, the horologe of the first world. Adam 
could scarce have missed it in Paradise. It was the 
measure appropriate for sweet plants and flowers to spring 
by, for the birds to apportion their silver warblings by, for 30 
flocks to pasture and be led to fold by. The shepherd 
1 Shakespeare, Sonnet, 104. 



BENCHERS OF THE INNER TEMPLE 165 

"carved it out quaintly in the sun ;"^ and, turning philos- 
opher bj the very occupation, provided it with mottoes 
more touching than tombstones. It was a pretty device of 
the gardener, recorded by Marvell, who, in the days of 
artificial gardening, made a dial out of herbs and flowers. 
I must quote his verses a little higher up, for they are full, 
ais all his serious poetry was, of a witty delicacy. They will 
hot come in awkwardly, I hope, in a talk of fountains and 
sun-dials. He is speaking of sweet garden scenes: 

What wondrous life in this I lead! 
Ripe apples drop about my head. 
The luscious clusters of the vine 
Upon my mouth do crush their wine. 
The nectarine, and curious peach, 
Into my hands themselves do reach. 
Stumbling on melons, as I pass, 
Insnared with flowers, I fall on grass, 
Meanwhile the mind from pleasure lees 
Withdraws into its happiness. 
The mind, that ocean, where each kind 
Does straight its own resemblance find; 
Yet it creates, transcending these, 
Far other worlds and other seas; 
Annihilating all that's made 
To a green thought in a green shade. 
Here at the fountain's sliding foot. 
Or at some fruit-tree's mossy root, 
Casting the body's vest aside. 
My soul into the boughs does glide: 
There like a bird it sits and sings. 
Then whets and claps its silver wings; 
And, till prepared for longer flight, 
Waves in its plumes the various light. 
How well the skilful gardner drew, 



1 III. Henry, VI.. II.. v. 24. 



166 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA 

Of flowers and herbs, this dial new I 
Where, from above the milder sun 
Does through a fragrant zodiac run; 
And, as it works, the industrious bee 
Computes its time as well as we. . j 

How could such sweet and wholesome hours 
' Be reckoned, but with herbs and flowers?^ 

The artificial fountains of the metropolis are, in like 
manner, fast vanishing. Most of them are dried up, or 
bricked over. Yet, where one is left, as in that little green lo 
nook behind the South-Sea House, what a freshness it gives 
to the dreary pile ! Four little winged marble boys used to 
play their virgin fancies, spouting out ever fresh streams 
from their innocent wanton lips, in the square of Lincoln's 
Inn, when I was no bigger than they were figured. They 15 
are gone, and the spring choked up. The fashion, they tell 
me, is gone by, and these things are esteemed childish. Why 
not then gratify children, by letting them stand ? Lawyers, 
I suppose, were children once. They are awakening ' 
images to them at least. Why must everything smack of 20 
man, and mannish? Is the world all grown up? Is child- 
hood dead? Or is there not in the bosoms of the wisest and • 
the best some of the child's heart left, to respond to its ear- 
liest enchantments ? The figures were grotesque. Are the 
stifl-wigged living figures, that still flitter and chatter about 25 
that area, less Gothic in appearance? or is the splutter 
of their hot rhetoric one half so refreshing and innocent 
as the little cool playful streams those exploded cherubs 
uttered? 

They have lately gothicised the entrance to the Inner 30 
Temple-hall, and the library front, to assimilate them, I 
suDDose, to the body of the hall, which they do not at all 

^ From a copy of verses entitled The Garden. (L.) 



BENCHERS OF THE INNER TEMPLE 167 

resemble. What is become of the winged horse that stood 
over the former? a stately arms! and who has removed 
those frescoes of the Virtues, which Italianised the end of 
the Paper-buildings? — my first hint of allegory! They 
5 must account to me for these things, which I miss so 
greatly. 

The terrace is, indeed, left, which we used to call the 
parade; but the traces are passed away of the footsteps 
which made its pavement awful! It is become common 
10 and profane. The old benchers had it almost sacred to 
themselves, in the fore part of the day at least. They 
might not be sided or jostled. Their air and dress asserted 
the parade. You left wide spaces betwixt you, when you 
passed them. We walk on even terms with their successors . 

15 The roguish eye of J 11, ever ready to be delivered of a 

jest, almost invites a stranger to vie a repartee with it. But 
what insolent familiar durst have mated Thomas Coventry? 
— ^whose person was a quadrate, his step massy and elephan- 
tine, his face square as the lion's, his gait peremptory and 
20 path-keeping, indivertible from his way as a moving column, 
the scarecrow of his inferiors, the brow-beater of equals and 
superiors, who made a solitude of children wherever he 
came, for they fled his insufferable presence, as they would 
have shunned an Elisha bear.^ His growl was as thunder in 
25 their ears, whether he spake to them in mirth or in rebuke, 
his invitatory notes being, indeed, of all, the most repulsive 
and horrid. Clouds of snuff, aggravating the natural 
terrors of his speech, broke from each majestic nostril, 
darkening the air. He took it, not by pinches, but a palm- 
so ful at once, diving for it under the mighty flaps of his 
old-fashioned waistcoat pocket; his waistcoat red and 

1 II. Kings, ii., 24. 



16S THE ESSAYS OF ELI A 

a-ngrj, his coat dark rappee, tinctured by dye original, and 
by adjuncts, with buttons of obsolete gold. And so he 
paced the terrace. 

By his side a milder form was sometimes to be seen ; the 
pensive gentility of Samuel Salt. They were coevals, and 5 
had nothing but that and their benchership in common. 
In politics Salt was a Whig, and Coventry a staunch Tory. 
Many a sarcastic growl did the latter cast out — for Coventry 
had a rough spinous humor — at the political confederates 
of his associate, which rebounded from the gentle bosom i& 
of the latter like cannon-balls from wool. You could not 
ruffle Samuel Salt. 

S. had the reputation of being a very clever man, and of 
excellent discernment in the chamber practice of the law. 
I suspect his knowledge did not amount to much. When 15 
a case of difficult disposition of money, testamentary or 
otherwise, came before him, he ordinarily handed it over 
with a few instructions to his man Lovel, who was a quick 
little fellow^, and would despatch it out of hand by the light 
of natural understanding, of which he had an uncommon 20 
share. It was incredible what repute for talents S. enjoyed 
by the mere trick of gravity. He was a shy man; a child 
might pose him in a minute — indolent and procrastinating 
to the last degree. Yet men w^ould give him credit for vast 
application in spite of himself. He was not to be trusted a» 
with himself with impunity. He never dressed for a dinner- 
party but he forgot his sword — they wore swords then — or 
some other necessary part of his equipage. Lovel had his 
eye upon him on all these occasions, and ordinarily gave 
him his cue. If there was anything which he could speak so 
unseasonably, he was sure to do it. — He was to dine at a 
relative's of the unfortunate Miss Blandy on the day of her 



BENCHERS OF THE INNER TEMPI/e 169 

execution ; and L., who had a wary foresight of his probable 
hallucinations, before he set out, schooled him with great 
anxiety not in any possible manner to allude to her story 
that day. S. promised faithfully to observe the injunction. 

5 He had not been seated in the parlor, where the company 
was expecting the dinner summons, four minutes, when, a 
pause in the conversation ensuing, he got up, looked out of 
the window, and pulling dow^n his ruffles — an ordinary 
motion with him — observed, *'it was a gloomy day," and 

10 added, "Miss Blandy must be hanged by this time, I 
suppose." Instances of this sort were perpetual. Yet S. 
was thought by some of the greatest men of his time a fit 
person to be consulted, not alone in matters pertaining to 
the law, but in the ordinary niceties and embarrassments of 

15 conduct— from force of manner entirely. He never laughed. 
He had the same good fortune among the female world, — 
was a known toast with the ladies, and one or two are said 
to have died for love of him — I suppose, because he never 
trifled or talked gallantry with them, or paid them, indeed, 

20 hardly common attentions. He had a fine face and person, 
but wanted, methought, the spirit that should have shown 
them off with advantage to the women. His eye lacked 
lustre. — Not so, thought Susan P ; who, at the ad- 
vanced age of sixty, was seen, in the cold evening time, un- 

25 accompanied, wetting the pavement of B d Row, with 

tears that fell in drops which might be heard, because her 
friend had died that day — he, whom she had pursued with 
a hopeless passion for the last forty years — a passion, which 
years could not extinguish or abate ; nor the long resolved, 

30 yet gently enforced, puttings off of unrelenting bachelor- 
hood dissuade from its cherished purpose. Mild Susan 
P , thou hast now thy friend in heaven! 



170 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA 

Thomas Coventry was a cadet of the noble family of that 
name. He passed his youth in contracted circumstances, 
which gave him early those parsimonious habits which in 
after-life never forsook him; so that, with one windfall or 
another, about the time I knew him he was master of four ^ 
or five hundred thousand pounds ; nor did he look, or walk, 
worth a moidore less. He lived in a gloomy house opposite 
the pump in Serjeants' Inn, Fleet Street. J., the counsel, 
is doing self-imposed penance in it, for what reason 1 divine 
not, at this day. C. had an agreeable seat at North Cray, lo 
where he seldom spent above a day or two at a time in the 
summer; but preferred, during the hot months, standing at 
his window in this damp, close, well-like mansion, to watch, 
as he said, ''the maids drawing water all day long." I 
suspect he had his within-door reasons for the preference. 15 
Hie currus et arma fuere} He might think his treasures 
more safe. His house had the aspect of a strong box. C. 
was a close hunks — a hoarder rather than a miser — or, if a 
miser, none of the mad Elwes breed, who have brought 
discredit upon a character, which cannot exist without 20 
certain admirable points of steadiness and unity of purpose. 
One may hate a true miser, but cannot, I suspect, so easily 
despise him. By taking care of the pence, he is often 
enabled to part with the pounds, upon a scale that leaves 
us careless generous fellows halting at an immeasurable 25 
•distance behind. C. gave away thirty thousand pounds at 
once in his lifetime to a blind charity. His housekeeping 
was severely looked after, but he kept the table of a gentle- 
man. He would know who came in and who went out of 
his house, but his kitchen chimney was never suffered to 30 
freeze. 

1 Virgil, Aeneid, I., 17. (Misquoted) 



BENCHERS OF THE INNER TEMPLE 171 

Salt was his opposite in this, as in all — never knew what 
he was worth in the world; and having but a competency 
for his rank, which his indolent habits were little calculated 
to improve, might have suffered severely if he had not had 

'5 honest people about him. Lovel took care of everything. 
He was at once his clerk, his good servant, his dresser, his 
friend, his ' 'flapper," his guide, stop watch, auditor, treas- 
urer. He did nothing without consulting Lovel, or failed 
in anything without expecting and fearing his admonish- 

10 ing. He put himself almost too much in his hands, had 
- they not been the purest in the world. He resigned his 
title almost to respect as a master, if L. could ever have 
forgotten for a moment that he was a servant. 

I knew this Lovel. He was a man of an incorrigible and 

15 losing honesty. A good fellow withal, and ' Vould strike."^ 
In the cause of the oppressed he never considered inequali- 
ties, or calculated the number of his opponents. He once 
wrested a sword out of the hand of a man of quality that 
had drawn upon him; and pommelled him severely with 

20 the hilt of it. The swordsman had offered insult to a 
female — an occasion upon which no odds against him 
could have prevented the interference of Lovel. He would 
stand next day bare-headed to the same person, modestly 
to excuse his interference — for L. never forgot rank, where 

25 something better was not concerned, L. was the liveliest 
little fellow breathing, had a face as gay as Garrick's, whom 
he was said greatly to resemble (I have a portrait of him 
which confirms it), possessed a fine turn for humorous 
poetry — next to Swift and Prior — moulded heads in clay or 

30 plaster of Paris to admiration, by the dint of natural genius 
merely; turned cribbage-boards, and such small cabinet 

1 King Lear, V., iii., 283. 



172 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA 

toys, to perfection; took a hand at quadrille or bowls with 
equal facility; made punch better than any man of his 
degree in England; had the merriest quips and conceits, 
and was altogether as brimful of rogueries and inventions as 
you could desire. He was a brother of the angle, moreover, 5 
and just such a free, hearty, honest companion as Mr. Izaak 
Walton would have chosen to go a-fishing with. I saw him 
in his old age and the decay of his faculties, palsy-smitten, 
in the last sad stage of human weakness — "a remnant most 
forlorn of what he was," — yet even then his eye would light 10 
up upon the mention of his favorite Garrick. He was 
greatest, he would say, in Bayes — 'Svas upon the stage 
nearly throughout the whole performance, and as busy as a 
hee." At intervals, too, he would speak of his former life, 
and how he came up a little boy from Lincoln to go to 15 
service, and how his mother cried at parting with him, and 
how he returned, after some few years' absence, in his 
smart new livery to see her, and she blessed herself at the 
change, and could hardly be brought to believe that it was 
*'her own bairn." And then, the excitement subsiding, he 20 
would weep, till I have wished that sad second-childhood 
might have a mother still to lay its head upon her lap. But 
the common mother of us all in no long time after received 
him gently into hers. 

With Coventry, and with Salt, in their walks upon the 25 
terrace, most commonly Peter Pierson would join, to make 
up a third. They did not walk linked arm in arm in those 
days — *'as now our stout triumvirs sweep the streets," — but 
generally with both hands folded behind them for state, or 
with one at least behind, the other carrying a cane. P. was so 
a benevolent, but not a prepossessing man. He had that 
in his face which you could not term unhappiness ; it rather 



BENCHERS OF THE INNER TEMPLE 173 

implied an incapacity of being happy. His cheeks were 
colorless, even to whiteness. His look was uninviting, 
resembling (but without his sourness) that of our great 
philanthropist. I know that he did good acts, but I could 
5 never make out what he was. Contemporary with these, 
but subordinate, was Daines Harrington — another oddity — 
hfc walked burly and square — in imitation, I think, of 
Coventry — ^howbeit he attained not to the dignity of his 
prototype. Nevertheless, he did pretty well, upon the 

19 strength of being a tolerable antiquarian, and having a 
brother a bishop. When the account of his year's treasurer- 
ship came to be audited, the following singular charge was 
unanimously disallowed by the bench: ''Item, disbursed 
Mr. Allen, the gardener, twenty shillings, for stuff to poison 

15 the sparrows, by my orders." Next to him was old Barton 
— a jolly negation, who took upon him the ordering of the 
bills of fare for the parliament chamber, where the benchers 
dine — answering to the combination rooms at college — 
much to the easement of his less epicurean brethren. I 

20 know nothing more of him. — Then Read, and Twopenny — 
Read, good-humored and personable — Twopenny, good- 
humored, but thin, and felicitous in jests upon his own 
figure. K T. was thin, Wharry was attenuated and fleet- 
ing. Many must remember him (for he was rather of later 

25 date) and his singular gait, which was performed by three 
steps and a jump regularly succeeding. The steps were little 
efforts, like that of a child beginning to walk; the jump com- 
paratively vigorous, as a foot to an inch. Where he learned 
this figure, or what occasioned it, I could never discover. 

30 It was neither graceful in itself, nor seemed to answer the 
purpose any better than common walking. The extreme 
tenuity of his frame, I suspect, set him upon it. It was a 



174 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA 

trial of poising. Twopenny would often rally him upon his 
leanness, and hail him as Brother Lusty; but W. had no 
relish of a joke. His features were spiteful. I have heard 
that he would pinch his cat's ears extremely, when anything 
had offended him. Jackson — the omniscient Jackson he 5 
was called — \^^SiS of this period. He had the reputation 
of possessing more multifarious knowledge than any man 
of his time. He was the Friar Bacon of the less literate 
portion of the Temple. I remember a pleasant passage, of 
the cook applying to him, with much formality of apology, 10 
for instructions how to write down edge bone of beef in his 
bill of commons. He was supposed to know, if any man in 
the world did. He decided the orthography to be — as I 
have given it — ^fortifying his authority with such anatomical 
reasons as dismissed the manciple (for the time) learned 15 
and happy. Some do spell it yet perversely, aitch bone, 
from a fanciful resemblance between its shape, and that 
of the aspirate so denominated. I had almost forgotten 
Mingay with the iron hand — but he was somewhat later. 
He had lost his right hand by some accident, and supplied 20 
it with a grappling hook, which he wielded with a tolerable 
adroitness. I detected the substitute, before I was old 
enough to reason whether it were artificial or not. I re- 
member the astonishment it raised in me. He was a blus- 
tering, loud-talking person ; and I reconciled the phenome- 25 
non to my ideas as an emblem of power — somewhat like 
the horns in the forehead of Michael Angelo's Moses. 
Baron Maseres, who walks (or did till very lately) in the 
costume of the reign of George the Second, closes my imper- 
fect recollections of the old benchers of the Inner Temple, so 

Fantastic forms, whither are ye fled? Or, if the like of 
you exist, why exist they no more for me? Ye inexplicable. 



BENCHERS OF THE INNER TEMPLE 175 

half-understood appearances, why comes In reason to tear 
away the preternatural mist, bright or gloomy, that en- 
shrouded you? Why make ye so sorry a figure in my 
relation, who made up to me — to my childish eyes — the 

5 mythology of the Temple? In those days I saw Gods, as 
"old men covered with a mantle," walking upon the earth. ^ 
Let the dreams of classic idolatry perish, — extinct be the 
fairies and fairy trumpery of legendary fabling, — in the 
heart of childhood, there will, for ever, spring up a well 

10 of innocent or wholesome superstition — the seeds of exag- 
geration will be busy there, and vital — from everyday 
forms educing the unknown and the uncommon. In that 
little Goshen there will be light, when the grown world 
flounders about in the darkness of sense and materiality. 

15 While childhood, and while dreams, reducing childhood, 
shall be left, imagination shall not have spread her holy 
wings totally to fly the earth. 

P.S. — I have done injustice to the soft shade of Samuel 
Salt. See what it is to trust to imperfect memory, and the 

20 erring notices of childhood ! Yet I protest I always thought 
that he had been a bachelor! This gentleman, R. N. 
informs me, married young, and losing his lady in child- 
bed, within the first year of their union, fell into a deep 
melancholy, from the effects of which, probably, he never 

25 thoroughly recovered. In what a new light does this place 
his rejection (O call it by a gentler name!) of mild Susan 

P , unravelling into beauty certain peculiarities of this 

very shy and retiring character! — Henceforth let no one 
receive the narratives of Elia for true records! They 

30 are, in truth, but shadows of fact — verisimilitudes, not 

1 I. Samuel, xxviii., 13-14. 



176 , THE ESSAYS OF ELIA 

Terities — or sitting but upon the remote edges and outskirts 
of history. He is no such honest chronicler as R. N., and 
would have done better perhaps to have consulted that 
gentleman, before he sent these incondite reminiscences to 
press. But the worthy sub-treasurer-— who respects his old 
and his new masters — ^would but have been puzzled at the 
indecorous liberties of Elia. The good man wots not, 
peradventure, of the licence which Magazines have arrived j 
at in this plain-speaking age, or hardly dreams of their 
existence beyond the Gentleman's — his furthest monthly 10 j 
excursions in this nature having been long confined to 
the holy ground of honest Urban' s obituary. May it be Si 
long before his own name shall help to swell those columns 
of unenvied flattery! — ^Meantime, O ye New Benchers of 
the Inner Temple, cherish him kindly, for he is himself the is 
kindliest of human creatures. Should infirmities overtake 
him — he is yet in green and vigorous senility — make allow- 
ances for them, remembering that "ye yourselves are old." 
So may the Winged Horse, your ancient badge and cog- 
nizance, still flourish! so may future Hookers and Seldens 20 
illustrate your church and chambers! so may the sparrows, 
in default of more melodious quiristers, unpoisoned hop 
about your walks! so may the fresh-colored and cleanly 
nursery-maid, who, by leave, airs her playful charge in your 
stately gardens, drop her prettiest blushing curtsey as ye 25 
pass, reductive of juvenescent emotion! so may the 
younkers of this generation eye you, pacing your stately 
terrace, with the same superstitious veneration, with which 
the child Elia gazed on the Old Worthies that solemnised 
the parade before ye! 30 



WITCHES AND OTHER NIGPIT-FEARS 177 

WITCHES AND OTHER NIGHT-FEARS. 

We are too hasty when we set down our ancestors in the 
gross for fools, for the monstrous inconsistencies (as they 
seem to us) involved in their creed of witchcraft. In the 
relations of this visible world we find them to have been as 

5 rational, and shrewd to detect an historic anomaly, as 
ourselves. But when once the invisible world was sup- 
posed to be opened, and the lawless agency of bad spirits 
assumed, what measures of probability, of decency, of fit- 
ness, or proportion — of that which distinguishes the likely 

Lo from the palpable absurd — could they have to guide them 
in the rejection or admission of any particular testimony? — 
That maidens pined away, wasting inwardly as their waxen 
images consumed before a fire — that corn was lodged,^ and 
cattle lamed — that whirlwinds uptore in diabolic revelry the 

15 oaks of the forest — or that spits and kettles only danced a 
fearful-innocent vagary about some rustic's kitchen whenno 
wind was stirring — ^were all equally probable where no law 
of agency was understood. That the prince of the powers 
of darkness, passing by the flower and pomp of the earth, 

JO should lay preposterous siege to the weak fantasy of indi- 
gent eld — ^has neither likelihood nor unlikelihood a priori to 
us, who have no measure to guess at his policy, or standard 
to estimate what rate those anile souls may fetch in the 
devil's market. Nor, when the wicked are expressly sym- 

(5 bolized by a goat, was it to be wondered at so much, that he 
should come sometimes in that body, and assert his meta- 
phor. — ^That the intercourse was opened at all between both 
worlds was perhaps the mistake — but that once assumed, I 
see no reason for disbelieving one attested story of this 

1 Macbeth, IV., i., 53. 



178 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA 

nature more than another on the score of absurdity. There 
is no law to judge of the lawless, or canon by which a dream 
may be criticised. 

I have sometimes thought that I could not have existed 
in the days of received witchcraft; that I could not have i 
slept in a village where one of those reputed hags dwelt. 
Our ancestors were bolder or more obtuse. Amidst the 
universal belief that these wretches were in league with the 
author of all evil, holding hell tributary to their muttering, 
no simple Justice of the Peace seems to have scrupled ic 
issuing, or silly Headborough serving, a warrant upon them 
—as if they should subpcena Satan !— Prospero in his boat,^ 
with his books and wand about him, suffers himself to be 
conveyed away at the mercy of his enemies to an unknown 
island. He might have raised a storm or two, we think, on- is 
the passage. His acquiescence is an exact analogy to the 
non-resistance of witches to the constituted powers.— What 

stops the Fiend hi Spenser from tearing Guyon to pieces^ 

or who had made it a condition of his prey, that Guyon 
must take assay of the glorious bait — we have no guess. 20 
We do not know the laws of that country. 

From my childhood I was extremely inquisitive about 
witches and witch-stories. My maid, and more legendary 
aunt, supplied me with good store. But I shall mention 
the accident which directed my curiosity originally into this 25 
channel. In my father's book-closet, the History of the 
Bible, by Stackhouse, occupied a distinguished station. 
The pictures with which it abounds— one of the ark, in 
particular, and another of Solomon's temple, delineated 
with all the fidelity of ocular admeasurement, as if the so 



1 The Tempest, I., ii., 144. 

2 Faerie Queene, II., vii., 64. 



WITCHES AND OTHER NIGHT-FEARS 179 

artist had been upon the spot — attracted my childish atten- 
tion. There was a picture, too, of the Witch raising up 
Samuel,^ which I wish that I had never seen. We shall 
come to that hereafter. Stackhouse is in two huge tomes — 

5 and there was a pleasure in removing folios of that magni- 
tude, which, with infinite straining, was as much as I could 
manage from the situation which they occupied upon an 
upper shelf. I have not met with the work from that time 
to this, but I remember it consisted of Old Testament 

10 stories, orderly set down, w^ith the objection appended to 
each story, and the solution of the objection regularly tacked 
to that. The objection was a summary of whatever dif- 
ficulties had been opposed to the credibility of the history, 
by the shrewdness of ancient or modern infidelity, drawn 

15 up with an almost complimentary excess of candor. The 
solution was brief, modest, and satisfactory. The bane and 
antidote were both before you. To doubts so put, and so 
quashed, there seemed to be an end for ever. The dragon 
lay dead, for the foot of the veriest babe to trample on. 

20 But — ^like as was rather feared than realised from that slain 
monster in Spenser^ — from the womb of those crushed 
errors young dragonets would creep, exceeding the prowess 
of so tender a Saint George as myself to vanquish. The 
habit of expecting objections to every passage, set me upon 

c25 starting more objections, for the glory of finding a solution 
of my own for them. I became staggered and perplexed, 
a sceptic in long-coats. The pretty Bible stories which I 
had read, or heard read in church, lost their purity and 
sincerity of impression, and were turned into so many 

30 historic or chronologic theses to be defended against what- 

1 I. Samuel, xxviii., 7-20. 

2 Faerie Queene, I., xii. 



180 THE ESSAYS OF ELI A 

ever impugners. I was not to disbelieve them, but — the 
next thing to that — I was to be quite sure that some one 
or other would or had disbelieved them. Next to making 
a child an infidel, is the letting him know that there are 
infidels at all. Credulity is the man's weakness, but the 
child's strength. O, how ugly sound scriptural doubts 
from the mouth of a babe and a suckling!^ — I should have 
lost myself in these mazes, and have pined away, I think, 
with such unfit sustenance as these husks afforded, but for 
a fortunate piece of ill-fortune, which about this time befell i 
me. Turning over the picture of the ark with too much 
haste, I unhappily made a breach in its ingenious fabric — 
driving my inconsiderate fingers right through the two < 
larger quadrupeds — the elephant and the camel — that stare 
(as well they might) out of the two last windows next the a 
steerage m that unique piece of naval architecture. Stack- 
house was henceforth locked up, and became an interdicted 
treasure. With the book, the objections and solutions 
gradually cleared out of my head, and have seldom returned 
since in any force to trouble me. — But there was one im- ? 
pression which I had imbibed from Stackhouse, which no 
lock or bar could shut out, and which was destined to try 
my childish nerves rather more seriously. — That detestable 
picture ! | 

I was dreadfully alive to nervous terrors. The night- 23i 
time solitude, and the dark, were my hell. The sufferings I ' 
endured in this nature would justify the expression. I 
never laid my head on my pillow, I suppose, from the 
fourth to the seventh or eighth year of my life — so far as I 
memory serves in things so long ago — ^without an assurance, sq 
which realised its own prophecy, of seeing some frightful ' 

1 Psalms, viii., 2. 



witch.es and other night-fears 181 

spectre. Be old Stackhouse then acquitted in part, if I say, 
that to hi.« picture of the Witch raising up Samuel — (O that 
~ old man covered with a mantle I) I owe — ^not my midnight 
terrors, the hell of my infancy — but the shape and manner 
5 of their visitation. It was he who dressed up for me a hag 
that nightly sate upon my pillow — a sure bedfellow, when 
my aunt or my maid was far from me. All day long, while 
the book was permitted me, I dreamed waking over his 
delineation, and at night (if I may use so bold an expression) 

10 awoke into sleep, and found the vision true. I durst not, 
even in the daylight, once enter the chamber where I slept, 
without my face turned to the window, aversely from the 
bed where my witch-ridden pillow was. — Parents do not 
know what they do when they leave tender babes alone to 

15 go to sleep in the dark. The feeling about for a friendly 
arm — the hoping for a familiar voice — ^when they wake 
screaming — and find none to soothe them— what a terrible 
shaking it is to their poor nerves I The keeping them up 
till midnight, through candle-light and the unwholesome 

j2o hours, as they are called, — would, I am satisfied, in a 
medical point of view, prove the better caution.— That 
detestable picture, as I have said^ gave the fashion to my 
dreams — if dreams they were — for the scene of them was 
invariably the room in which I lay. Had I never met with 

j25 the picture, the fears would have come self -pictured in some 
shape or other — 

Headless bear, black man, or ape,* 

but, as it was, my imaginations took that form. — It is not 

book, or picture, or the stories of foolish servants, which 

^30 create these terrors in children. They can at most but give 

1 Burton, Anatomy of Melancholy. 



182 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA • 

them a direction. Dear little T. H., who of all children has 
been brought up with the most scrupulous exclusion of 
ever}' taint of superstition — who was never allowed to hear 
of goblin or apparition, or scarcely to be told of bad men, or 
to read or hear of any distressing stor}' — finds all this world s 
of fear, from which he has been so rigidly excluded ah extra, 
in his own ''thick-coming fancies;"^ and from his little 
midnight pillow, this nurse-child of optimism will start at 
shapes, unborrowed of tradition, in sweats to which the 
reveries of the cell-damned murderer are tranquillit}'. lo 

Gorgons, and Hydras, and Chimseras dire^ — stories of 
Celseno and the Harpies^ — may reproduce themselves in the 
brain of superstition — but they were there before. They 
are transcripts, ts-pes — the archet\^es are in us, and eter- 
nal. How else should the recital of that, which we know ^^ 
in a waking sense to be false, come to affect us at all? — or 

Xames, whose sense we see not, 

Fray us with things that be not ?^ 

Is it that we naturally conceive terror from such subjects, 
considered in their capacity of being able to inflict upon us 20 
bodily injurv^' — O, least of all I These terrors are of older 
standing. They date beyond body — or, without the body, 
they would have been the same. All the cruel, tormenting, 
defined devils in Dante — tearing, mangling, choking, sti- 
fling, scorching demons — are they one-half so fearful to the -^ 
spirit of a man, as the simple idea of a spirit unembodied 
following him — 

Like one that on a lonesome road 
Doth walk in fear and dread, 

1 Macbeth, V., iii., 3S. 

2 Paradise Lost, II., 628. 

3 Virgil, Aexeid, III. 

4 Spenser. Epithalamium. 



WITCHES AND OTHER NIGHT-FEARS 183 

And having once turn'd round, walks on 
And turns no more his head; 
Because he knows a frightful fiend 
'Doth close behind him tread. ^ 

( 5 That the kind of fear here treated is of purely spiritual — • 
that it is strong in proportion as it is objectless upon earth 
— that it predominates in the period of sinless infancy — ^are 
difficulties, the solution of which might afford some prob- 
able insight into our ante-mundane condition, and a peep 

1 10 at least into the shadow-land of pre-existence. 

My night fancies have long ceased to be afflictive. I 
confess an occasional nightmare; but I do not, as in early 
youth, keep a stud of them. Fiendish faces, with the 
extinguished taper, will come and look at me; but I know 
15 them for mockeries, even while I cannot elude their pres- 
ence, and I fight and grapple with them. For the credit of 
my imagination, I am almost ashamed to say how tame and 
prosaic my dreams are grown. They are never romantic, 
seldom even rural. They are of architecture and of build- 

I 20 in2:s — cities abroad, which I have never seen, and hardly 
have hope to see. I have traversed, for the seeming length 
of a natural day, Rome, Amsterdam, Paris, Lisbon — their 
churches, palaces, squares, market-places, shops, suburbs, 
ruins, with an inexpressible sense of delight — a map-like 

i25 distinctness of trace — and a daylight vividness of vision, 
that was all but being awake. — I have formerly travelled 
among the Westmoreland fells — my highest Alps, — but 
they are objects too mighty for the grasp of my dreaming 
recognition; and I have again and again awoke with in- 

1 30 effectual struggles of the inner eye, to make out a shape, 
in any way whatever, of Helvellyn. Methought I was in 



1 Mr. Coleridge's Ancient Mariner. (L.) 




1S4 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA 

that country, but the mountains were gone. The poverty 
of my dreams mortifies me. There is Coleridge, at his will 
can conjure up icy domes, and pleasure-houses for 
Kubla Khan, and Abyssinian maids, and songs of Abara, 
and caverns. 

Where Alph, the sacred river, runs,^ 

to solace his night solitudes — when I cannot muster a fiddle. 
Barry Cornwall has his tritons and his nereids gambolling 
before him in nocturnal visions, and proclaiming sons born 
to Neptune — ^when my stretch of imaginative activity can i^ 
hardly, in the night season, raise up the ghost of a fish-wife. 
To set my failures in somewhat a mortifying light — it was 
after reading the noble Dream of this poet, that my fancy 
ran strong upon these marine spectra; and the poor plastic 
power, such as it is, within me set to work, to humor my is 
folly in a sort of dream that very night. Methought I was 
upon the ocean billows at some sea nuptials, riding and 
mounted high, with the customary train sounding their 
conchs before me (I myself, you may be sure, the leading 
god), and jollily we went careering over the main, till just 20 
where Ino Leucothea should have greeted me (I think it 
was Ino) with a white embrace, the billows gradually sub- 
siding, fell from a sea-roughness to a sea-calm, and thence 
to a river-motion, and that river (as happens in the familiar- 
isation of dreams) was no other than the gentle Thames, 25 
which landed me, in the wafture of a placid wave or two, 
alone, safe and inglorious, somewhere at the foot of 
Lambeth Palace. 

The degree of the soul's creatlveness in sleep might 
furnish no whimsical criterion of the quantum of poetical 30 

1 Coleridge, Kubla Khan. 



GRACE BEFORE MEAT 185 

faculty resident in the same soul waking. An old gentle- 
man, a friend of mine, and a humorist, used to carry this 
notion so far, that when he saw any stripling of his ac- 
quaintance ambitious of becoming a poet, his first question 
;■ would be, — "Young man, what sort of dreams have you?" 
I have so much faith in my old friend's theory, that when I 
feel that idle vein returning upon me, I presently subside 
into my proper element of prose, remembering those 
eluding nereids, and that inauspicious inland landing. 

GRACE BEFORE MEAT. 

10 The custom of saying grace at meals had, probably, its 
origin in the early times of the world, and the hunter-state 
of man, when dinners were precarious things, and a full 
meal was something more than a common blessing ; when a 
bellyful was a windfall, and looked like a special providence. 

5 In the shouts and triumphal songs with which, after a sea- 
son of sharp abstinence, a lucky booty of deer's or goat's 
flesh w^ould naturally be ushered home, existed, perhaps, 

, the germ of the modern grace. It is not otherwise easy to 
be understood, why the blessing of food — the act of eating 

!o — should have had a particular expression of thanksgiving 
annexed to it, distinct from that implied and silent gratitude 
with which we are expected to enter upon the enjoyment of 

, the many other various gifts and good things of existence. 
I own that I am disposed to say grace upon twenty other 

,5 occasions in the course of the day besides my dinner. I 
want a form for setting out upon a pleasant walk, for a 
moonlight ramble, for a friendly meeting, or a solved 

^ problem. Why have we none for books, those spiritual 
repasts — a grace before Milton— a grace before Shak- 



186 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA 

speare— a devotional exercise proper to be said before read- 
ing the Faery Queene?— but, the received ritual having pre- 
scribed these forms to the solitary ceremony of manduca- 
tion, I shall confine my observations to the experience which 
I have had of the grace, properly so called ; commending my i 
new scheme for extension to a niche in the grand philo- 
sophical, poetical, and perchance in part heretical, liturgy, 
now compiling by my friend Homo Humanus, for the use 
of a certain snug congregation of Utopian Rabel^sian 
Christians, no matter where assembled. k 

The form then of the benediction before eating has its 
beauty at a poor man's table, or at the simple and un- 
provocative repast of children. It is here that the grace 
becomes exceedingly graceful. The indigent man, who 
hardly knows whether he shall have a meal the next day 15 
or not, sits down to his fare with a present sense of the 
blessing, which can be but feebly acted by the rich, into 
whose minds the conception of wanting a dinner could 
never, but by some extreme theory, have entered. The 
proper end of food — the animal sustenance — is barely 20 
contemplated by them. The poor man's bread is nis daily 
bread, literally his bread for the day. Their courses are 
perennial. 

Again, the plainest diet seems the fittest to be preceded 
by the grace. That which is least stimulative to appetite, 25 
leaves the mind most free for foreign considerations. A 
man may feel thankful, heartily thankful, over a dish of 
plain mutton with turnips, and having leisure to reflect 
upon the ordinance and institution of eating; when he. shall 
confess a perturbation of mind, inconsistent with the pur- 30 
poses of the grace, at the presence of venison or turtle. 
When I have sate (a rarus hns'pe?') ?A rich liien's tables, with 



GRACE BEFORE MEAT 187 

the savory soup and messes steaming up the nostrils, and 
moistening the lips of the guests with desire and a distracted 
choice, I have felt the introduction of that ceremony to be 
unseasonable. With the ravenous orgasm upon you, it 

5 seems impertinent to interpose a religious sentiment. It is 
a confusion of purpose to mutter out praises from a mouth 
that waters. The heats of epicurism put out the gentle 
flame of devotion. The incense which rises round is pagan, 
and the belly-god intercepts it for his own. The very 

to excess of the provision beyond the needs, takes away all 
sense of proportion between the end and means. The 
giver is veiled by his gifts. You are startled at the injustice 
-of returning thanks — for what? — for having too much, 
while so many starve. It is to praise the Gods amiss. ^ 

;i5 I have observed this awkwardness felt, scarce consciously 
perhaps, by the good man who says the grace. I have 
seen it in clergymen and others — a sort of shame — a sense 
of the co-presence of circumstances which unhallow the 
blessing. After a devotional tone put on for a few seconds, 

i2o how rapidly the speaker will fall into his common voice, 
helping himself or his neighbor, as if to get rid of some 
uneasy sensation of hypocrisy. Not that the good man 
was a hypocrite, or was not most conscientious in the dis- 
charge of the duty; but he felt in his inmost mind the in- 

25 compatibility of the scene and the viands before him with 
the exercise of a calm and rational gratitude. 

I hear somebody exclaim, — Would you have Christians 
sit down at table, like hogs to their troughs, without remem- 
bering the Giver? — no — I would have them sit down as 

30 Christians, remembering the Giver, and less like hogs. Or 
if their appetites must run riot, and they must pamper 

1 CoMUS, 177. 



188 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA 

themselves with deUcacies for which east and west are 
ransacked, I would have them postpone their benediction 
to a fitter season, when appetite is laid; when the still small 
voice^ can be heard, and the reason of the grace returns — ' 
with temperate diet and restricted dishes. Gluttony and j 
surfeiting are no proper occasions for thanksgiving. When 
Jeshurun waxed fat, we read that he kicked.^ Virgil knew 
the harpy-nature better, when he put into the mouth of 
Celseno anything but a blessing. We may be gratefully 
sensible of the deliciousness of some kinds of food beyond k 
others, though that is a meaner and inferior gratitude ; but 
the proper object of the grace is sustenance, not relishes; 
daily bread, not delicacies ; the means of life, and not the 
means of pampering the carcass. With what frame or com- 
posure, I wonder, can a city chaplain pronounce his bene- \i 
diction at some great Hall feast, when he knows that his last 
concluding pious word — and that in all probability, the 
sacred name which he preaches — is but the signal for so 
many impatient harpies to commence their foul orgies, with 
as little sense of true thankfulness (which is temperance) as 20' 
those Virgilian fowl! It is well if the good man himself 
does not feel his devotions a little clouded, those foggy 
sensuous steams mingling with and polluting the pure altar 
sacrifice. 

The severest satire upon full tables and surfeits is the 25) 
banquet which Satan, in the Paradise Regained, provides 
for a temptation in the wilderness : 

A table richly spread in regal mode, 
With dishes piled, and meats of noblest sort 
And savor; beasts of chase, or fowl of game, 



1 I. Kings, xix., 12. 

2 Deuteronomy, xxxii., 15. 



I 



GRACE BEFORE MEAT 189 

In pastry built, or from the spit, or boil'd, 
Gris-amber-steam'd; all fish from sea or shore, 
Freshet or purling brook, for- which was drain 'd 
Pontus, and Lucrine bay, and Afric coast.^ 



The Tempter, I warrant you, thought these cates would 
go down without the recommendatory preface of a benedic- 
tion. They are like to be short graces where the devil plays 
the host. — I am afraid the poet wants his usual decorum in 
this place. Was he thinking of the old Roman luxury, or of 
a gaudy day at Cambridge? This was a temptation fitter 
for a Heliogabalus. The whole banquet is too civic and 
culinary, and the accompaniments altogether a profana- 
tion of that deep, abstracted, holy scene. The mighty 
artillery of sauces, which the cook-fiend conjures up, is out 
of proportion to the simple wants and plain hunger of the 
guest. He that disturbed him in his dreams, from his 
dreams might have been taught better. To the temperate 
fantasies of the famished Son of God, what sort of feasts 
presented themselves? — He dreamed indeed, 

As appetite is wont to dream, 



Of meats and drinks, nature's refreshment sweet. 

But what meats? 

Him thought, he by the brook of Cherith stood, 

And saw the ravens with their horny beaks 

Food to Elijah bringing even and morn; 

Though ravenous, taught to abstain from what they brought; 

He saw the prophet also how he fled 

Into the desert, and how there he slept 

Under a juniper; then how awaked 

He found his supper on the coals prepared, 

And by the angel was bid rise and eat; 

1 Paradise Regained, II., 340fl, 



190 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA 

And ate the second time after repose, 
The strength whereof sufficed him forty days: 
Sometimes, that with EUjah he partook, 
Or as a guest with Daniel at his pulse. ^ 

Nothing in Milton is finelier fancied than these temperate 
dreams of the divine Hungerer. To which of these two 
visionary banquets, think you, would the introduction of 
what is called the grace have been most fitting and per- 
tinent? 

Theoretically I am no enemy to graces; but practically lo 
I own that (before meat especially) they seem to involve 
something awkward and unseasonable. Our appetites, of 
one or another kind, are excellent spurs to our reason, 
which might otherwise but feebly set about the great ends 
of preserving and continuing the species. They are fit n 
blessings to be contemplated at a distance with a becoming 
gratitude ; but the moment of appetite (the judicious reader 
will apprehend me) is, perhaps, the least fit season for that 
exercise. The Quakers who go about their business, of 
every description, with more calmness than we, have more 20 ' 
title to the use of these benedictory prefaces. I have always 
admired their silent grace, and the more because I have 
observed their applications to the meat and drink foUow^ing 
to be less passionate and sensual than ours. They are 
neither gluttons nor wine-bibbers as a people. They eat, 25 
as a horse bolts his chopped hay, with indifference, calm- 
ness, and cleanly circumstances. They neither grease nor 
slop themselves. When I see a citizen in his bib and 
tucker, I cannot imagine it a surplice. 

I am no Quaker at my food. I confess I am not indif- so 
ferent to the kinds of it. Those unctuous morsels of deer's 

1 Pakadise Regained. II., 264fiE. 



GRACE BEFORE MEAT 191 

flesh were not made to be received with dispassionate serv- 
ices. I hate a man who swallows it, affecting not to knov/ 
what he is eating. I suspect his taste in higher matters. I 
shrink instinctively from one who professes to like minced 
i 5 veal. There is a physiognomical character in the tastes for 

food. C- holds that a man cannot have a pure mind 

who refuses apple-dumplings. I am not certain but he is 
right. With the decay of my first innocence, I confess a 
less and less relish daily for those innocuous cates. The 
), 10 whole vegetable tribe have lost their gust with me. Only 
I stick to asparagus, which still seems to inspire gentle 
thoughts. I ^m impatient and querulous under culinar}' 
disappointments, as to come home at the dinner-hour, for 
instance, expecting some savory mess, and to find one 
1 15 quite tasteless and sapidless. Butter ill melted — that com- 
monest of kitchen failures — puts me beside my tenour.— 
The author of the Rambler used to make inarticulate 
animal noises over a favorite food. Was this the music 
quite proper to be preceded by the grace? or would the 
20 pious man have done better to postpone his devotions to a 
season when the blessing might be contemplated with less 
perturbation? I quarrel with no man's tastes, nor would 
set my thin face against those excellent things, in their 
way, jollity and feasting. But as these exercises, however 
::25 laudable, have little in them of grace or gracefulness, a man 
should be sure, before he ventures so to grace them, that 
while he is pretending his devotions otherwhere, he is not 
secretly kissing his hand to some great fish — his Dagon — 
with a special consecration of no ark but the fat tureen 
(30 before him. Graces are the sweet preluding strains to the 
banquets of angels and children; to the roots and severer 
repasts of the Chartreuse ; to the slender, but not slenderly 



192 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA 

acknowledged, refection of the poor and humble man: but 
at the heaped-up boards of the pampered and the luxurious 
they become of dissonant mood, less timed and tuned to 
the occasion, methinks, than the noise of those better be- 
fitting organs would be, which children hear tales of at 
Hog's Norton. We sit too long at our meals, or are too 
curious in the study of them, or too disordered in our appli- 
cation to them, or engross too great a portion of those good . 
things (which should be common) to our share, to be able 
with any grace to say grace. To be thankful for what we lo 
grasp exceeding our proportion is to add hypocrisy to in- 
justice. A lurking sense of this truth is what makes the 
performance of this duty so cold and spiritless a service at 
most tables. In houses where the grace is as indispensable 
as the napkin, who has not seen that never-settled question is 
arise, as to who shall say it; while the good man of the house 
and the visitor clergyman, or some other guest belike of next 
authority from years or gravity, shall be bandying about ' 
the office between them as a matter of compliment, each 
of them not unwilling to shift the awkward burthen of an 20' 
equivocal duty from his own shoulders? 

I once drank tea in company with two Methodist divines 
of different persuasions, whom it was my fortune to intro- 
duce to each other for the first time that evening. Before 
the first cup was handed round, one of these reverend 25 
gentlemen put it to the other, with all due solemnity, 
whether he chose to say anything. It seems it is the cus- 
tom with some sectaries to put up a short prayer before 
this meal also. His reverend brother did not at first quite 
apprehend him, but upon an explanation, with little less 30 
importance he made answer, that it was not a custom known 
in his church : in which courteous evasion the other acqui- 



GRACE BEFORE MEAT 193 

escing for good manners' sake, or in compliance with a 
weak brother, the supplementary or tea-grace was waived 
altogether. With what spirit might not Lucian have 
painted two priests, of his religion, playing into each other's 

. hands the compliment of performing or omitting a sacrifice, 
■■ — the hungry God meantime, doubtful of his incense, with 
expectant nostrils hovering over the tw o flamens, and (as be- 
tween two stools) going away in the end without his supper. 
A short form upon these occasions is felt to want rever- 

ence ; a long one, I am afraid, cannot escape the charge of 
impertinence. I do not quite approve of the epigrammatic 
conciseness with w^hich that equivocal wag (but my pleas- 
ant school-fellow) C. V. L., when importuned for a grace, 
used to inquire, first slyly leering down the table, *'Is 

5 there no clergyman here?" — significantly adding, "Thank 
God — ." Nor do I think our old form at school quite 
pertinent, where we were used to preface our bald bread 
and cheese suppers with a preamble connecting with that 
humble blessing a recognition of benefits the most awful 

and overwhelming to the imagination which religion has 
to offer. Non tunc illis erat locus} I remember we were 
put to it to reconcile the phrase "good creatures," upon 
which the blessing rested, wuth the fare set before us, wil- 
fully understanding that expression in a low and animal 

5 sense, — till some one recalled a legend, which told how in 
the golden days of Christ's, the young Hospitallers were 
wont to have smoking joints of roast meat upon their 
nightly boards, till some pious benefactor, commiserating 
the decencies, rather than the palates, of the children, 

) commuted our flesh for garments, and gave us — horresco 
ref evens — trowsers instead of mutton. 

1 Horace, Ars Poetica, 19. 



194 THE ESSAYS CF ELIA 

MY FIRST PLAY. 

At the north end of Cross Court there yet stands a portal, 
of some architectural pretensions though reduced to humble 
use, serving at present for an entrance to a printing-office. 
This old door-way, if you are young, reader, you may not 
know was the identical pit entrance to Old Drury — Gar- 
rick's Drury — all of it that is left. I never pass it without 
shaking some forty years from off my shoulders, recurring 
to the evening when I passed through it to see my first play. 
The afternoon had been wet, and the condition of our going 
(the elder folks and myself) was, that the rain should cease, lo 
With what a beating heart did I watch from the window the 
puddles, from the stillness of which I was taught to prog- 
nosticate the desired cessation! I seem to remember the 
last spurt, and the. glee with which I ran to announce it. 

We went with orders, which my godfather F. had sent us. is 
He kept the oil shop (nowDavies's) at the corner of Feather- 
stone Buildings, in Holborn. F. was a tall grave person, 
lofty in speech, and had pretensions above his rank. He 
associated in those days with John Palmer, the comedian, 
whose gait and bearing he seemed to copy ; if John (which 20' 
is quite as likely) did not rather borrow somewhat of his 
manner, from my godfather. He was also known to, and 
visited, by Sheridan. It was to his house in Holborn that 
young Brinsley brought his first wife on her elopement with 
him from a boarding-school at Bath — the beautiful Maria 25 
Linley. My parents were present (over a quadrille table) 
when he arrived in the evening with his harmonious charge. 
— From either of these connections it may be inferred that 
my godfather could command an order for the then Drury- 
lane theatre at pleasure — and, indeed, a pretty liberal issue 30 



MY FIRST PLAY 195 

of those cheap billets, in Brinsley's easy autograph, I have 
heard him say was the sole remuneration which he had 
received for many years' nightly illumination of the orches- 
tra and various avenues of that theatre — and he was content 

, 5 it should be so. The honor of Sheridan's familiarity — or 
supposed familiarity — was better to my godfather than 
money. 

F. was the most gentlemanly of oilmen; grandiloquent, 
yet courteous. His delivery of the commonest matters of 

10 fact was Ciceronian. He had two Latin words almost con- 
stantly in his mouth (how odd sounds Latin from an oil- 
man's lips !), which my better knowledge since has enabled 
me to correct. In strict pronunciation they should have 
been sounded vice versa — but in those young years they 

15 impressed me with more awe than they would now do, 
read aright from Seneca or Varro — in his own peculiar 
pronunciation, monosyilabically elaborated, or Anglicised, 
into something like verse verse. By an imposing manner, 
and the help of these distorted syllables, he climbed (but 

20 that was little) to the highest parochial honors which St. 
Andrew's has to bestow. 

He is dead — and thus much I thought due to his memory, 
both for my first orders (little wondrous talismans ! — slight 
keys, and insignificant to outward sight, but opening to me 

25 more than Arabian paradises!) and moreover, that by his 
testamentary beneficence I came into possession of the only 
landed property which I could ever call my ow^n — situate 
near the roadway village of pleasant Puckeridge, in Hert- 
fordshire. When I journeyed down to take possession, and 

30 planted foot on my own ground, the stately habits of the 
donor descended upon me, and I strode (shall I confess the 
vanity?) with larger paces over my allotment of three- 



196 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA 

j 

quarters of an acre, with its commodious mansion in the 
midst, with the feehng of an English freeholder that all 
betwixt sky and centre was my own. The estate has passed 
into more prudent hands, and nothing but an agrarian can 
restore it. 5 

In those days were pit orders. Beshrew the uncomfort- 
able manager who abolished them ! — ^with one of these we 
went. I remember the waiting at the door — ^not that which 
is left — but between that and an inner door in shelter — O 
when shall I be such an expectant again! — ^with the cry of 10 
nonpareils, an indispensable play-house accompaniment in 
those days. As near as I can recollect, the fashionable 
pronunciation of the theatrical fruiteresses then was, 
"Chase some oranges, chase some numparels, chase a bill 
of the play;" — chase 'pro chuse. But when we got in, and is 
I beheld the green curtain that veiled a heaven to my 
imagination, which was soon to be disclosed the breath- 
less anticipations I endured! I had seen something like 
it in the plate prefixed to Troilus and Cressida, in Rowe's 
Shakspeare — the tent scene with Diomede — and a sight of 20 
that plate can always bring back in a measure the feeling 
of that evening. — ^The boxes at that time, full of well- 
dressed women of quality, projected over the pit; and the 
pilasters reaching down were adorned with a glistening sub- 
stance (I know not what) under glass (as it seemed), re- 25 
sembling — a homely fancy — but I judged it to be sugar- 
candy — yet, to my raised imagination, divested of its 
homelier qualities, it appeared a glorified candy! — The 
orchestra lights at length arose, those *'fair Auroras!" 
Once the bell sounded. It was to ring out yet once again — so 
and, incapable of the anticipation, I reposed my shut eyes 
in a sort of resignation upon the maternal lap. It rang the 



MY FIRST PLAY 197 

second time. The curtain drew up — I was not past six 
years old — and the play was Artaxerxes ! 

I had dabbled a little in the Universal History — the 
ancient part of it — and here was the court of Persia. It 

,5 was being admitted to a sight of the past. I took no proper 
interest in the action going on, for I understood not its im- 
port — but I heard the word Darius, and I was in the midst 
of Daniel. All feeling was absorbed in vision. Gorgeous 
vests, gardens, palaces, princesses, passed before me. I 
10 knew not players. I was in Persepolis for the time; and 
the burning idol of their devotion almost converted me 
into a worshipper. I was awestruck, and believed those 
significations to be something more than elemental fires. 
It was all enchantment and a dream. No such pleasure 

\ 15 has since visited me but in dreams. — Harlequin's Invasion 
followed; where, I remember, the transformation of the 
magistrates into reverend beldams seemed to me a 
piece of grave historic justice, and the tailor carrying 
his own head to be as sober a verity as the legend of 
20 St. Denys. 

The next play to which I was taken was the Lady of tlie 
Manor, of which, with the exception of some scenery, very 
faint traces are left in my memory. It was followed by a 
pantomime, called Lun's Ghost — a satiric touch, I appre- 

125 hend, upon Rich, not long since dead — ^but to my appre- 
hension (too sincere for satire), Lun was as remote a piece 
of antiquity as Lud — the father of a line of Harlequins — 
transmitting his dagger of lath (the wooden sceptre) through 
countless ages. I saw the primeval Motley come from his 
30 silent tomb in a ghastly vest of white patchwork, like the 
apparition of a dead rainbow. So Harlequins (thought I) 
look when they are dead. 



198 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA 

My third play followed in quick succession. It was the 
Way of the World. I think I must have sat at it as grave 
as a judge: for, I remember, the hysteric affectations of 
good Lady Wishfort affected me like some solemn tragic 
passion. Robinson Crusoe followed; in which Crusoe, 
man Friday, and the parrot, were as good and authentic as 
in the story. — ^The clownery and pantaloonery of these 
pantomimes have clean passed out of my head. I believe, 
I no more laughed at them, than at the same age I should 
have been disposed to laugh at the grotesque Gothic heads lo 
(seeming to me then replete with devout meaning) that 
gape, and grin, in stone around the inside of the old Round 
Church (my church) of the Templars. 

I saw these plays in the season 1781-2, when I was from 
six to seven years old. After the intervention of six or is 
seven other years (for at school all playgoing was inhibited) 
I again entered the doors of a theatre. That old Artaxerxes 
evening had never done ringing in my fancy. I expected 
the same feelings to come again with the same occasion. 
But we differ from ourselves less at sixty and sixteen, than 20 
the latter does from six. In that interval what had I not 
lost! At the first period I knew nothing, understood 
nothing, discriminated nothing. I felt all, loved all, 
wondered all — 

Was nourished, I could not tell how— ^ 25 

I had left the temple a devotee, and was returned a ration- 
alist. The same things were there materially; but the 
emblem, the reference, was gone ! — The green curtain was 
no longer a veil, drawn between two worlds, the unfolding 
of which was to bring back past ages, to present "a royal 30 

1 Walton, Complete Angler. 



DREAM-CHILDREN: A REVERIE 199 

ghost," — but a certain quantity of green baize, which was 
to separate the audience for a given time from certain of 
their fellow-men who were to come forward and pretend 
those parts. The lights — the orchestra lights — came up a 

5 clumsy machinery. The first ring, and the second ring, 
was now but a trick of the prompter's bell — ^which had been 
like the note of the cuckoo, a phantom of a voice,^ no hand 
seen or guessed at which ministered to its warning. The 
actors were men and women painted. I thought the fault 

10 was in them; but it was in myself, and the alteration which 
those many centuries — of six short twelvemonths — had 
wrought in me. — Perhaps it was unfortunate for me that 
the play of the evening was but an indifferent comedy, as it 
gave me time to crop some unreasonable expectations, 

15 which might have interfered with the genuine emotions with 
which I was soon after enabled to enter upon the first ap- 
pearance to me of Mrs. Siddons in Isabella. Comparison 
and retrospection soon yielded to the present attraction of 
the scene; and the theatre became to me, upon a new stock, 

20 the most delightful of recreations. 

DREAM-CHILDREN: A REVERIE. 

Children love to listen to stories about their elders, when 
they were children : to stretch their imagination to the con- 
ception of a traditionary great-uncle, or grandame, whom 
they never saw. It was in this spirit that my little ones 
25 crept about me the other evening to hear about their great- 
grandmother Field, who lived in a great house in Norfolk 
(a hundred times bigger than that in which they and papa 
lived) which had been the scene — so at least it was generally 



1 Wordsworth, To the Cuckoo. 



200 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA 

believed in that part of the country — of the tragi(? incidents 
which they had lately become familiar with from the ballad 
of the Children in the Wood. Certain it is that the whole 
story of the children and their cruel uncle was to be seen 
fairly carved out in wood upon the chimney-piece of the s 
great hall, the whole story down to the Robin Redbreasts, 
till a foolish rich person pulled it down to set up a marble 
one of modera invention in its stead, with no story upon it. 
Here Alice put out one of her dear mother's looks, too ten- 
der to be called upbraiding. Then I went on to say, how lo 
religious and how good their great-grandmother Field was, 
how beloved and respected by everybody, though she was 
not indeed the mistress of this great house, but had only 
the charge of it (and yet in some respects she might be said 
to be the mistress of it too) committed to her by its owner, 15 
who preferred living in a newer and more fashionable 
mansion which he had purchased somewhere in the adjoin- 
ing county ; but still she lived in it in a manner as if it had 
been her own, and kept up the dignity of the great house in 
a sort while she lived, which afterwards came to decay, 20 
and was nearly pulled down, and all its old ornaments 
stripped and carried away to the owner's other house, 
where they were set up, and looked as awkward as if some 
one were to carry away the old tombs they had seen lately 
at the Abbey, and stick them up in Lady C.'s tawdry gilt 25 
drawing-room. Here John smiled, as much as to say, 
"that would be foolish, indeed." And then I told how, 
when she came to die, her funeral was attended by a con- 
course of all the poor, and some of the gentry too, of the. 
neighborhood for many miles round, to show their respect 30 
for her memory, because she had been such a good and 
religious woman; so good indeed that she knew all the* 



DREAM-CHILDREN: A REVERIE 201 

Psaltery by heart, ay, and a great part of the Testament 
besides. Here little Alice spread her hands. Then I told 
what a tall, upright, graceful person their great-grand- 
mother Field once was: and how in her youth she was 

5 esteemed the best dancer — here little Alice's little right foot 
played an involuntary movement, till upon my looking 
grave, it desisted — the best dancer, I was saying, in the 
county, till a cruel disease, called a cancer, came, and 
bowed her down with pain ; but it could never bend her good 

10 spirits, or make them stoop, but they were still upright, be- 
cause she was so good and religious. Then I told how she 
used to sleep by herself in a lone chamber of the great lone 
house ; and how she believed that an apparition of two in 
fants was to be seen at midnight gliding up and down the 

15 great staircase near where she slept, but she said "those 
innocents would do her no harm;" and how frightened I 
used to be, though in those days I had my maid to sleep 
with me, because I was never half so good or religious as 
she — and yet I never saw the infants. Here John ex- 

20 panded all his eyebrows and tried to look courageous. 
Then I told how good she was to all her grandchildren, 
having us to the great house in the holidays, where I in 
particular used to spend many hours by myself, in gazing 
upon the old busts of the twelve Caesars, that had been 

!25 Emperors of Rome, till the oid marble heads would seem to 
live again, or I to be turned into marble with them; how I 
could never be tired with roaming about that huge mansion, 
with its vast empty rooms, with their worn-out hangings, 
fluttering tapestry, and carved oaken panels, with the gikl- 

«J30 ing almost rubbed out — sometimes in the spacious old- 
fashioned gardens, which I had almost to myself, unless 
when now and then a solitary gardening man would cross 



202 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA 

me — and how the nectarines and peaches hung upon the 
walls, without my ever offering to pluck them, because they 
were forbidden fruit, unless now and then, — and because I 
had more pleasure in strolling about among the old melan- 
choly-looking yew-trees, or the firs, and picking up the red 5 
berries, and the fir apples, which were good for nothing but 
to look at — or in lying about upon the fresh grass, with all^ 
the fine garden smells around me — or basking in the 
orangery, till I could almost fancy myself ripening too 
along with the oranges and the limes in that grateful 10 
warmth — or in watching the dace that darted to and fro in 
the fish-pond, at the bottom of the garden, with here and 
there a great sulky pike hanging midway down the water 
in silent state, as if it mocked at their impertinent friskings, 
— I had more pleasure in these busy-idle diversions than 15 
in all the sweet flavors of peaches, nectarines, oranges, and 
such like common baits of children. Here John slyly de- 
posited back upon the plate a bunch of grapes which, not 
unobserved by Alice, he had meditated dividing with her, 
and both seemed willing to relinquish them for the present 20 
as irrelevant. Then in somewhat a more heightened tone, 
I told how, though their great-grandmother Field loved all 
her grandchildren, yet in an especial manner she might be 

said to love their uncle, John L , because he was so 

handsome and spirited a youth, and a king to the rest of us; 25 
and, instead of moping about in solitary corners, like some 
of us, he would mount the most mettlesome horse he could 
get, when but an imp no bigger than themselves, and make 
it carry him half over the county in a m'orning, and join the 
hunters when there were any out — and yet he loved the old 30 
great house and gardens too, but had too much spirit to be 
always pent up within their boundaries — and how their 



DREAM-CHILDREN: A REVERI-E 203 

uncle grew up to man's estate as brave as he was handsome, 
to the admiration of everybody, but of their great-grand- 
mother Field most especially; and how he used to carry 
me upon his back when I was a lame-footed boy — ^for he 

5 was a good bit older than me — many a mile when I could 
not walk for pain ; — and how in after-life, he became lame- 
footed too, and I did not always (I fear) make allowance 
enough for him when he was impatient, and in pain, nor 
remember sufficiently how considerate he had been to me 

10 when I was lame-footed; and how when he died, though he 
had not been dead an hour, it seemed as if he had died a 
great while ago, such a distance there is betwixt life and 
death; and how I bore his death as I thpught pretty well at 
first, but afterwards it haunted and haunted me; and 

15 though I did not cry or take it to heart as some do, and as 
I think he would have done if I had died, yet I missed him 
all day long, and knew not till then how much I had loved 
him. I missed his kindness, and I missed his crossness, 
and wished him to be alive again, to be quarrelliag with him 

20 (for we quarrelled sometimes), rather than not have him 
again, and was as uneasy without him, as he, their poor 
uncle, must have been when the doctor took off his limb. 
Here the children fell a-crying, and asked if their little 
mourning which they had on was not for uncle John, and 

25 they looked up, and prayed me not to go on about their 
uncle, but to tell them some stories about their pretty dead 
mother. Then I told how for seven long years, in hope 
sometimes, sometimes in despair, yet persisting ever, I 
courted the fair Alice W ^n; and, as much as children 

30 could understand, I explained to them what coyness, and 
difficulty, and denial meant in maidens— when suddenly, 
turning to Alice, the soul of the first Alice looked out at 



204 ' THE ESSAYS OF ELIA 

her eyes with such a reaHty of re-presentment, that I 
became in doubt which of them stood there before me, or 
whose that bright hair was , and while I stood gazing, both 
the children gradually grew fainter to my view, receding, 
and still receding till nothing at last but two mournful 5 
features were seen in the uttermost distance, which, with- 
out speech, strangely impressed upon me the effects of 
speech: "We are not of Alice nor of thee, nor are we 
children at all. The children of Alice call Bartrum father. 
We are nothing; less than nothing, and dreams. We are 10 
only what might have been, and must wait upon the 
tedious shores of Lethe millions of ages, before we have 

existence, and a name" and immediately awaking, I 

found myself quietly seated in my bachelor arm-chair, 
where I had fallen asleep, with the faithful Bridget un- 15 
changed by my side— but John L. (or James Elia) was 
gone for ever. 

ON SOME OF THE OLD ACTORS. 

The casual sight of an old Play Bill, which I picked up the •. 
other day — I know not by what chance it was preserved so 
long — tempts me to call to mind a few of the Players, who 20 
make the principal figure in it. It presents the cast of 
parts in the Twelfth Night at the old Drury Lane Theatre 
two-and-thirty years ago. There is something very touch- 
ing in these old remembrances. They make us think how 
we once used to read a Play Bill — not, as now peradventure, 25 
singling out a favorite performer, and casting a negligent 
eye over the rest ; but spelling out every name, down to the 
very mutes and servants of the scene: — ^when it was a 
matter of no small moment to us whether Whitfield, or 
Packer, took the part of Fabian ; when Benson and Burton so 



ON SOME OF THE OLD ACTORS 205 

and Phillimore — names of small account — had an im- 
portance beyond what we can be content to attribute 
now to the time's best actors.— "Orsino, by Mr. Barry- 
more."— What a full Shakspearean sound it carries! how 

5 fresh to memory arise the image, and the manner, of the 
gentle actor! 

Those who have only seen Mrs. Jordan within the last 
ten or fifteen years, can have no adequate notion of her 
performance of such parts as Ophelia ; Helena, in All's Well 

10 that Ends Well; and Viola in this play. Her voice had 
latterly acquired a coarseness, which suited well enough 
with her Nells and Hoydens, but in those days it sank, with 
her steady melting eye, into the heart. Her joyous parts— 
in which her memory now chiefly lives— in her youth were 

15 outdone by her plaintive ones. There is no giving an 
account how she delivered the disguised story of her love^ 
for Orsino. It was no set speech, that she had foreseen, so 
as to weave it into an harmonious period, line necessarily 
following line, to make up the music— yet I have heard it so 

20 spoken, or rather read, not without its grace and beauty— 
but, when she had declared her sister's history to be a 
"blank," and that she ''never told her love," there was a 
pause, as if the story had ended— and then the image of the 
"worm in the bud" came up as a new suggestion— and the 

25 heightened image of "Patience" still followed after that, 
as by some growing (and not mechanical) process, thought 
springing up after thought, I would almost say, as they were 
watered by her tears. So in those fine lines- 
Write loyal cantos of contemned love — 

30 Halloo your name to the reverberate hills— ^ 



1 Twelfth Night, II., iv., end. 

2 Twelfth Night, I., v., 289. 



206 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA 

there was no preparation made in the foregoing image for 
that which was to follow. She used no rhetoric in her 
passion; or it was nature's own rhetoric, most legitimate 
then, when it seemed altogether without rule or law. 

Mrs. Powel (now Mrs. Renard), then in the pride of her 5 
beauty, made an admirable Olivia. She was particularly 
excellent in her unbending scenes in conversation with the 
Clown. I have seen some Olivias — and those very sensible 
actresses too — who in these interlocutions have seemed to 
set their wits at the jester, and to vie conceits with him in 10 
downright emulation. But she used him for her sport, like 
what he was, to trifle a leisure sentence or two with, and 
then to be dismissed, and she to be the Great Lady still. 
She touched the imperious fantastic humor of the character 
with nicety. Her fine spacious person filled the scene. 15 

The part of Malvolio has in my judgment been so often 
misunderstood, and the general merits of the actor, who 
then played it, so unduly appreciated, that I shall hope for 
pardon, if I am a little prolix upon these points. 

Of all the actors who flourished in my time^a melan- 20 
choly phrase if taken aright, reader — Bensley had most of 
the swell of soul, was greatest in the delivery of heroic con- 
ceptions, the emotions consequent upon the presentment 
of a great idea to the fancy. He had the true poetical 
enthusiasm^the rarest faculty among players. None that 25 
I remember possessed even a portion of that fine madness 
which he threw out in Hotspur's famous rant about glory,^ 
or the transports of the Venetian incendiary at the vision 
of the fired city. His voice had the dissonance, and at 
times the inspiriting effect of the trumpet. His gait was 30 
uncouth and stiff, but no way embarrassed by affectation ; 

1 I. Henry IV., I., iii., 201. 



ON SOME OF THE OLD ACTORS 207 

nd the thorough-bred gentleman was uppermost in every 
ovement. He seized the moment of passion with the 
greatest truth; Hke a faithful clock, never striking before the 
time; never anticipating or leading you to anticipate. He 

5 was totally destitute of trick and artifice. He seemed come 
upon the stage to do the poet's message simply, and he did 
it with as genuine fidelity as the nuncios in Homer dehver 
the errands of the gods. He let the passion or the senti- 
ment do its own w^ork without prop or bolstering. He 

10 would have scorned to mountebank it; and betrayed none 
of that cleverness which is the bane of serious acting. For 
this reason, his lago was the only endurable one which I 
remember to have seen. No spectator from his action 
could divine more of his artifice than Othello was supposed 

15 to do. His confessions in soliloquy alone put you in pos- 
session of the mystery. There were no by-intimations to 
make the audience fancy their own discernment so much 
greater than that of the Moor — ^who commonly stands like 
a great helpless mark set up for mine Ancient, and a 

20 quantity of barren spectators,^ to shoot their bolts at. The 
lago of Bensley did not go to work so grossly. There was 
a triumphant tone about the character, natural to a general 
consciousness of power; but none of that petty vanity 
which chuckles and cannot contain itself upon any little 

25 successful stroke of its knavery — as is common with your 
small villains, and green probationers in mischief. It did 
not clap or crow before its time. It was not a man setting 
his wits at a child, and winking all the while at other 
children who are mightily pleased at being let into the 

30 secret; but a consummate villain entrapping a noble nature 
into toils, against which no discernment was available, 

i Hamlet, III., ii., 45. 



10 



208 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA 

where the manner was as fathomless as the purpose seemed 
dark, and without motive. The part of MalvoHo, in the 
Twelfth Night, was performed by Bensley with a richness 
and a dignity of which (to judge from some recent castings 
of that character) the very tradition must be w^orn out from 
the stage. No manager in those days would have dreamed 
of giving it to Mr. Baddeley, or Mr. Parsons : when Bensley 
was occasionally absent from the theatre, John Kemble 
thought it no derogation to succeed to the part. Malvolio 
is not essentially ludicrous. He becomes comic but by 
accident. He is cold, austere, repelling; but dignified, 
consistent, and, for what appears, rather of an over- 
stretched morality. Maria describes him as a sort of Puri- 
tan ; and he might have worn his gold chain with honor in 
one of our old round-head families, in the service of a Lam- is 
bert, or a Lady Fairfax. But his morality and his manners 
are misplaced in lUyria. He is opposed to the proper 
levities of the piece, and falls in the unequal contest. Still 
his pride, or his gravity (call it which you will), is inherent, 
and native to the man, not mock or affected, which latter 20 
only are the fit objects to excite laughter. His quality is 
at the best unlovely, but neither buffoon nor contemptible. 
His bearing is lofty, a little above his station, but probably 
not much above his deserts. We see no reason why he 
should not have been brave, honorable, accomplished. His 25 
careless committal of the ring to the ground (which he was 
commissioned to restore to Cesario), bespeaks a generosity 
of birth and feeling. His dialect on all occasions is that of 
a gentleman and a man of education. We must not con- 
found him with the eternal old, low steward of comedy, so 
He is master of the household to a great Princess ; a dignity 
probably conferred upon him for other respects than age 



10 



ON SOME OF THE OLD ACTORS 200 

or length of service. Olivia, at the first indication of his 
supposed madness, declares that she "would not have him 
miscarry for half of her dowry." Does this look as if the 
character was meant to appear little or insignificant? Once, 
indeed, she accuses him to his face — of what? — of being 
"sick of self-love," — but with a gentleness and considerate- 
ness which could not have been, if she had not thought that 
this particular infirmity shaded some virtues. His rebuke 
to the knight, and his sottish revellers, is sensible and 
spirited; and when we take into consideration the unpro- 
tected condition of his mistress, and the strict regard with 
which her state of real or dissembled mourning would draw 
the eyes of the world upon her house-affairs, ]\Ialvolio 
might feel the honor of the family in some sort in his keep- 

i 15 ing; as it appears not that Olivia had any more brothers, or 
kinsmen, to look to it — for Sir Toby had dropped all such 
nice respects at the buttery hatch. That Malvolio was 
meant to be represented as possessing estimable qualities, 
the expression of the Duke in his anxiety to have him 

( 20 reconciled, almost infers: "Pursue him, and entreat him 
to a peace." Even in his abused state of chains and dark- 
ness, a sort of greatness seems never to desert him. He 
argues highly and well with the supposed Sir Topas,^ and 
philosophises gallantly upon his straw. There must have 

i 25 been some shadow of worth about the man; he must have 
been something more than a mere vapor — a thing of straw, 
or Jack in office — before Fabian and Maria could have 
ventured sending him upon a courting-errand to Olivia. 

1 Clown. What is the opinion of Pythagoras concerning wild fowl ? 
Mai. That the soul of our grandam might haply inhabit a bird. 
Clown. What thinkest thou of his opinion ? 

Mai. I think nobly of the soul, and no way approve of his opinion. 

Twelfth Night, IV., So. ii. (L.) 



210 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA 

There was some consonancy^ (as he would say) in th-e un- 
dertaking, or the jest would have been too bold even for 
that house of misrule. 

Bensley, accordingly, threw over the part an air of Span- 
ish loftiness. He looked, spake, and moved like an old s 
Castilian. He was starch, spruce, opinionated; but his 
superstructure of pride seemed bottomed upon a sense of 
worth. There was something in it beyond the coxcomb. 
It was big and swelling, but you could not be sure that it 
was hollow. You might wish to see it taken down, but lo 
you felt that it was upon an elevation. He was magnificent 
from the outset; but when the decent sobrieties of the char- 
acter began to give way, and the poison of self-love, in his 
conceit of the Countess's affection, gradually to work, you 
would have thought that the hero of La Mancha in person is 
stood before you. How he went smiling to himself! with 
what ineffable carelessness would he twirl his gold chain! 
what a dream it was! you were infected with the illusion, 
and did not wish that it should be removed ! you had no 
room for laughter! if an unseasonable reflection of morality 20 
obtruded itself, it was a deep sense of the pitiable infirmity 
of man's nature, that can lay him open to such frenzies— 
but in truth you rather admired than pitied the lunacy 
while it lasted— you felt that an hour of such mistake was 
worth an age with the eyes open. Who would not wish 25 
to live but for a day in the conceit of such a lady's love as 
Olivia? Why, the Duke would have given his principality 
but for a quarter of a minute, sleeping or waking, to have 
been so deluded. The man seemed to tread upon air, to 
taste manna, to walk with his head in the clouds, to mate 30 
Hyperion. O ! shake not the castles of his pride — endure 

1 Twelfth Nigth, II., v., 141. 



ON SOME OF THE OLD ACTORS 211 

yet for a season, bright moments of confidence — ^^stand 
still, ye watches of the element,"^ that Malvolio may be 
still in fancy fair Olivia's lord — but fate and retribution 
say no — I hear the mischievous titter of Maria — the witty 
5 taunts of Sir Toby — the still more insupportable triumph 
of the foolish knight — the counterfeit Sir Topas is un- 
masked — and *'thus the whirligig of time,** as the true 
clown hath it, "brings in his revenges."^ I confess that I 
never saw the catastrophe of this character, while Bensley 

10 played it, without a kind of tragic interest. There was 
good foolery too. Few now remember Dodd. What an 
Aguecheek the stage lost in him! Lovegrove, who came 
nearest to the old actors, revived the character some few 
seasons ago, and made it sufficiently grotesque; but Dodd 

15 was it, as it came out of nature's hands. It*might be said 
to remain in puris naturalibus. In expressing slowness of 
apprehension this actor surpassed all others. You could 
see the first dawn of an idea stealing slowly over his coun- 
tenance, climbing up by little and little, with a painful proc- 

20 ess, till it cleared up at last to the fulness of a twilight con- 
ception — its highest meridian. He seemed to keep back 
his intellect, as some have had the power to retard their 
pulsation. The balloon takes less time in filling, than it 
took to tover the expansion of his broad moony face over 

25 all its quarters with expression. A glimmer of under- 
standing would appear in a corner of his eye, and for lack 
of fuel go out again. A part of his forehead would catch 
a little intelligence, and be a long time in communicating 
it to the remainder. 

30 I am ill at dates, but I think it is now better than five- 

1 Marlowe, Edward II., V., i., 66. 

2 Twelfth Night, V., i., 385. 



212 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA 

and-twenty years ago, that walking in the gardens of Gray's 

Inn they were then far finer than they are now — the 

accursed Verulam Buildings had not encroached upon all 
the east side of them, cutting out delicate green crankles, 
and shouldering away one or two of the stately alcoves of s 
the terrace — the survivor stands gaping and relationless as 
if it remembered its brother — they are still the best gardens 
of any of the Inns of Court, my beloved Temple not for- 
gotten — ^have the gravest character, their aspect being 
altogether reverend and law-breathing — Bacon has left the lo 

impress of his foot upon their gravel walks taking my 

afternoon solace on a summer day upon the aforesaid 
terrace, a comely sad personage came towards me, whom, 
from his grave air and deportment, I judged to be one of 
the old Benchfers of the Inn. He had a serious thoughtful 15 
forehead, and seemed to be in meditations of mortality. 
As I have- q,n instinctive awe of old Benchers, I was passing 
him with \hat sort of subindicative token of respect which 
one is apt to demonstrate towards a venerable stranger, and 
which rpther denotes an inclination to greet him, than any 20 
positivf motion of the body to that effect — a species of 
humility and will-worshp which I observe, nine times out 
of teri, rather puzzles than pleases the person it is offered to 
— ^w'aen the face turning full upon me strangely identified 
itself with that of Dodd. Upon close inspection I was not '25 
mistaken. But could this sad thoughtful countenance be 
the same vacant face of folly which I had hailed so often 
under circumstances of gaiety; which I had never seen 
without a smile, or recognized but as the usher of mirth; 
that looked out so formally flat in Foppington, so frothily 30 
pert inTattle, so impotently busy in Backbite; so blankly 
divested of all meaning, or resolutely expressive of none, in 



ON SOME OF THE OLD ACTORS 213 

Acres, in Fribble, and a thousand agreeable impertinences? 
Was this the face — full of thought and carefulness — that 
had so often divested itself at will of every trace of either to 
give me diversion, to clear my cloudy face for two or three 

5 hours at least of its furrows? Was this the face — manly, 
sober, intelligent — ^which I had so often despised, made 
mocks at, made merry with? The remembrance of the 
freedoms which I had taken with it came upon me with a 
reproach of insult. I could have asked it pardon. I 

10 thought it looked upon me with a sense of injury. There 
is something strange as well as sad in seeing actors — ^your 
pleasant fellows particularly — subjected to and suffering 
the common lot — their fortunes, their casualties, the deaths^^ 
seem to belong to the scene, their actions to be amenable to 

15 poetic justice only. We can hardly connect them with more 
awful responsibilities. The death of this fine actor took 
place shortly after this meeting. He had quitted the stage 
some months ; and as I learned afterwards, had been in the 
habit of resorting daily to these gardens almost to the day of 

20 his decease. In these serious walks probably he was divest- 
ing himself of many scenic and some real vanities — wean- 
ing himself from the frivolities of the lesser and the greater 
theatre — doing gentle penance for a life of no very repre- 
hensible fooleries, — taking off by degrees the buffoon mask 

25 which he might feel he had worn too long — and rehearsing 
for a more solemn cast of part. Dying, he "put on the 
weeds of Dominic."^ 

If few can remember Dodd,^ many yet living will not 

1 Paradise Lost, III., 479. 

2 Dodd was a man of reading, and left at his death a choice collection 
of old English literature. I should judge him to have been a man of 
wit. I know one instance of an impromptu which no length of study- 
could have bettered. My merry friend, Jem White, had seen him one 
evening in Aguecheek, and, recognising Dodd the next day in Fleet 




214 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA 

easily forget the pleasant creature, who in those ^. 
enacted the part of the Clown to Dodd's Sir Andrew- 
Richard, or rather Dicky Suett— for so in his lifetime he 
delighted to be called, and time hath ratified the appella- 
tion— lieth buried on the north side of the cemetery of ; 
Holy Paul, to whose service his nonage and tender years 
were dedicated. There are who do yet remember him at 
that period— his pipe clear and harmonious. He would 
often speak of his chorister days, when he was "cherub 
Dicky." 

What clipped his wings, or made it expedient that he 
should exchange the holy for the profane state; whether he 
had lost his good voice (his best recommendation to that 
office), like Sir John, "with hallooing and singing of 
anthems ;"i or whether he was adjudged to lack something, i^ 
even m those early years, of the gravity indispensable to an 
occupation which professeth to "commerce with the skies"^ 
—I could never rightly learn; but we find him, after the 
probation of a twelvemonth or so, reverting to a secular 
condition, and become one of us. 20 

I think he was not altogether of that timber out of which 
cathedral seats and sounding-boards are hewed. But if a 
glad heart— kind and therefore glad— be any part of sanc- 
tity, then might the robe of Motley, with which he invested 
himself with so much humility after his deprivation, and 25 
which he wore so long with so much blameless satisfaction 
to himself and to the public, be accepted for a surplice— his 
white stole , and alhe. 

^^^^^^^ 

1 II. Henry IV., I., ii., 213. 

2 II Penseroso, 1. 39, 



ON SOME OF THE OLD ACTORS 215 

The first fruits of his secularization was an engagement 
upon the boards of Old Drury, at which theatre he com- 
menced, as 1 have been told, with adopting the manner of 
Parsons in old men's characters. At the period in which 

5 most of us knew him, he was no more an imitator than he 
was in any true sense himself inimitable. 

He was the Robin Good-Fellow of the stage. He came 
in to trouble all things with a welcome perplexity, himself 
no whit troubled for the matter. He was known, like Puck, 

10 by his note — Ha! Ha! Ha! — sometimes deepening to 
Ho! Ho! Ho! with an irresistible accession derived per- 
haps remotely from his ecclesiastical education, foreign to 
his prototype, of — La! Thousands of hearts yet respond 
to the chuckling La! of Dicky Suett, brought back to 

15 their remembrance by the faithful transcript of his friend 
Mathews's mimicry. The "force of nature could no farther 
go."^ He drolled upon the stock of these two syllables 
richer than the cuckoo. 

Care, that troubles all the world, was forgotten in his 

20 composition. Had he had but two grains (nay, half a 
grain) of it, he could never have supported himself upon 
those two spider's strings, which served him (in the latter 
part of his unmixed existence) as legs. A doubt or a 
scruple must have made him totter, a sigh have puffed him 

25 down ; the weight of a frown had staggered him, a wrinkle 
made him lose his balance. But on he went, scrambling 
upon those airy stilts of his, with Robin Good-Fellow, 
''thorough brake, thorough briar, "^ reckless of a scratched 
face or a torn doublet. 

30 Shakspeare foresaw him, when he framed his fools and 

1 Dryden, Under Mr. Milton's Picture. 

2 Midsummer Night's Dream, II., i., 3. 



216 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA 

jesters. They have all the true Sue tt stamp, a loose and 
shambling gait, a slippery tongue, this last the ready mid- 
wife to a without-pain-delivered jest; in words, light as 
air, venting truths deep as the centre; with idlest rhymes 
tagging conceit when busiest, singing with Lear in the 5 
tempest, or Sir Toby at the buttery-hatch. ^| 

Jack Bannister and he had the fortune to be more of ' 
personal favorites with the town than any actors before or 
after. The difference, I take it, was this: — Jack was more 
beloved for his sweet, good-natured, moral pretensions, lo 
Dicky was more liked for his sweet, good-natured, no 
pretensions at all. Your whole conscience stirred with 
Bannister's performance of Walter in the Children in the 
Wood — but Dicky seemed like a thing, as Shakspeare says 
of Love, too young to know what conscience is. He put is 
us into Vesta's days. Evil fled before him — not as from 
Jack, as from an antagonist, — but because it could not 
touch him, any more than a cannon-ball a fly. He was 
delivered from the burthen of that death ;^ and when Death 
came himself, not in metaphor, to fetch Dicky, it is recorded 20 
of him by Robert Palmer, who kindly watched his exit, that 
he received the last stroke, neither varying his accustomed 
tranquillity, nor tune, with the simple exclamation, worthy 
to have been recorded in his epitaph — La! O La! 
Bobby! 25 

The elder Palmer (of stage-treading celebrity) commonly 
played Sir Toby in those days; but there is a solidity of 
wit in the jests of that half-Falstaff which he did not quite 
fill out. He was as much too showy, as Moody (who some- 
times took the part) was dry and sottish. In sock or buskin 30 
there was an air of swaggering gentility about Jack Palmer, 

1 Romans, vii., 24. 



ON SOME OF THE OLD ACTORS 217 

He was a gentleman with a slight infusion of the footman. 
His brother Bob (of recenter memory), who was his shadow 
in everything while he lived, and dwindled into less than a 
shadow afterwards — ^was a gentleman with a little stronger 

5 infusion of the latter ingredient; that was all. It is 

amazing how a little of the more or less makes a difference 

in these things. When you saw Bobby in the Duke's 

-^ Servant,^ you said, what a pity such a pretty fellow was 

only a servant. When you saw Jack figuring in Captain 

10 Absolute, you thought you could trace his promotion to 
some lady of quality who fancied the handsome fellow in 
his top-knot, and had bought him a- commission. There- 
fore Jack in Dick Amlet was insuperable. 

Jack had two voices, — both plausible, hypocritical, and 

15 insinuating; but his secondary or supplemental voice still 
more decisively histrionic than his common one. It was 
reserved for the spectator; and the dramatis personse were 
supposed to know nothing at all about it. The lies of 
young Wilding, and the sentiments in Joseph Surface, were 

20 thus marked out in a sort of italics to the audience. This 
secret correspondence with the company before th@ curtain 
(which is the bane and death of tragedy) has an extremely 
happy effect in some kinds of comedy, in the more highly 
artificial comedy of Congreve or of Sheridan especially, 

25 w^iere the absolute sense of reality (so indispensable to 
scenes of interest) is not required, or would rather interfere 
to diminish your pleasure. The fact is, you do not believe 
in such characters as Surface — the villain of artificial 
comedy — even while you read or see them. If you did^ 

30 they would shock and not divert you. When Ben, in 
Love for Love, returns from sea, the following exquisite 

1 High Life Below Staies, Garrick. (L.) 



218 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA 

dialogue occurs at his first meeting with his father: — 

Sir Sampson. Thou hast been many a weary league, Ben, 
since I saw thee. 

Ben. Ey, ey, been! Been far enough, an that be all. — Well, 
father, and how do all at home? how does brother Dick, and s 
brother Val? 

Sir Sampson. Dick! body o' me, Dick has been dead these 
two years. I writ you word when you were at Leghorn. 

Ben. Mess, that's true; Marry, I had forgot. Dick's dead, 
as you say — Well, and how? — I have a many questions to ask lo 
you— 

Here is an instance of insensibility which in real life 
would be revolting, or rather in real life could not have 
co-existed with the warm-hearted temperament of the char- 
acter. But when you read it in the spirit with which such 15 
playful selections and specious combinations rather than 
strict metaphrases of nature should be taken, or when you 
saw Bannister play it, it neither did, nor does, wound the 
moral sense at all. For what is Ben — the pleasant sailor 
which Bannister gives us — but a piece of satire — a creation 20 
of Congreve's fancy — a dreamy combination of all the 
accidents of a sailor's character — his contempt of money — 
his credulity to women — with that necessary estrangement 
from home which it is just within the verge of credibility to 
suppose might produce such an hallucination as is here 25 
described. We never think the worse of Ben for it, or feel 
it as a stain upon his character. But when an actor comes, 
and instead of the delightful phantom — the creature dear 
to half-belief — ^which Bannister exhibited — displays before 
our eyes a downright concretion of a Wapping sailor — a so 
jolly warm-hearted Jack Tar — and nothing else — when 
instead of investing it with a delicious confusedness of the 
head, and a veering undirected goodness of purpose — he 



i 



DISTANT CORRESPONDENTS 219 

gives to it a downright daylight understanding, and a full 
consciousness of its actions; thrusting forward the sensi- 
bilities of the character with a pretense as if it stood upon 
nothing else, and was to be judged by them alone — we feel 
5 the discord of the thing; the scene is disturbed; a real man 
has got in among the dramatis personee, and puts them out. 
We want the sailor turned out. We feel that his true place 
is not behind the curtain but in the first or second gallery. 

DISTANT CORRESPONDENTS. 

IN A LETTER TO B. F. ESQ., AT SYDNEY, NEW SOUTH WALES. 

My dear F. — When I think how welcome the sight of a 

10 letter from the world where you were born must be to you 
in that strange one to which you have been transplanted, I 
feel some compunctious visitings at my long silence. But, 
indeed, it is no easy effort to set about a correspondence 
at our distance. The weary world of waters between us 

15 oppresses the imagination. It is difl&cult to conceive how a 
scrawl of mine should ever stretch across it. It is a sort of 
presumption to expect that one's thoughts should live so far. 
It is like writing for posterity; and reminds me of one of 
Mrs. Rowe's superscriptions, "Alcander to Strephon, in the 

20 Shades." Cowley's Post-Angel is no more than would be 
expedient in such an intercourse. One drops a packet at 
Lombard Street, and in twenty-four hours a friend in 
Cumberland gets it as fresh as if it came in ice. It is only 
like whispering through a long trumpet. But suppose a 

25 tube let down from the moon, with yourself at one end, 
and the man at the other; it would be some balk to the 
spirit of conversation, if you knew that the dialogue ex- 
changed with that interesting theosophist would take two 



220 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA 

or three revolutions of a higher luminary in its passage. 
Yet for aught I know, you may be some parasangs nigher 
that primitive idea — Plato's man — than we in England here 
have the honor to reckon ourselves. 

Epistolary matter usually comprise th three topics; news, i 
sentiment, and puns. In the latter, I include all non- 
serious subjects; or subjects serious in themselves, but 
treated after my fashion, non-seriously. — And first, for 
news. In them the most desirablq circumstance, I 'sup- 
pose, is that they shall be true. But what security can le 
I have that what I now send you for truth shall not before 
you get it unaccountably turn into a lie? For instance, 
our mutual friend P. is at this present writing — my Now — 
in good health, and enjoys a fair share of worldly reputa- 
tion. You are glad to hear it. This is natural and is 
friendly. But at this present reading — your Now—he 
may possibly be in the Bench, or going to be hanged, 
which in reason ought to abate something of your trans- 
port (^. e., at hearing he was well, etc.), or at least con- 
siderably to modify it. I am going to the play this even- 20 
ing, to have a laugh with Munden. You have no theatre, 

I think you told me, in your land of d d realities. You 

naturally lick your lips, and envy me my felicity. Think 
but a moment, and you will correct the hateful emotion. 
Why, it is Sunday morning with you, and 1823. This con- 25 
fusion of tenses, this grand solecism of two presents, is in a 
degree common to all postage. But if I sent you word to 
Bath or the Devizes, that I was expecting the aforesaid 
treat this evening, though at the moment you received the 
intelligence my full feast of fun would be over, yet there 30 
would be for a day or two after, as you would well know, 
a smack, a relish left upon my mental palate, which would 



DISTANT CORRESPONDENTS 221 

give rational encouragement for you to foster a portion at 
least of the disagreeable passion, which it w^as in part my 
intention to produce. But ten months hence, your envy 
or your sympathy would be as useless as a passion spent 

5 upon the dead. Not only does truth, in these long inter- 
vals, unessence herself, but (what is harder) one cannot 
venture a crude fiction for the fear that it may ripen into a 
truth upon the voyage. What a wild improbable banter I 
put upon you some three years since of Will Weatherall 

10 having married a servant-maid ! I remember gravely con- 
sulting you how we were to receive her — for Will's wife was 
in no case to be rejected ; and your no less serious replica- 
tion in the matter: how tenderly you advised an abstemious 
introduction of literary topics before the lady, with a cau- 

is tion not to be too forward in bringing on the carpet matters 
more within the sphere of her intelligence ; your deliberate 
judgment, or rather wise suspension of sentence, how far 
jacks, and spits, and mops could with propriety be intro- 
duced as subjects; whether the conscious avoiding of all 

20 such matters in discourse would not have a worse look than 
the taking of them casually in our way ; in what manner we 
should carry ourselves to our maid Becky, Mrs. William 
Weatherall being by; whether we should show more 
delicacy, and a truer sense of respect for Will's wife, by 

25 treating Becky with our customary chiding before her, or 
by an unusual deferential civility paid to Becky as to a 
person of great worth, but thrown by the caprice of fate 
into a humble station. There were difficulties, I remem- 
ber, on both sides, which you did me the favor to state with 

30 the precision of a lawyer, united to the tenderness of a 
friend. I laughed in my sleeve at your solemn pleadings, 
when lo! while I was valuing myself upon this flam put 



222 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA 

upon you in New South Wales, the devil in England, 
jealous possibly of any lie-children not his own, or working 
after my copy, has actually instigated our friend (not three 
days since) to the commission of a matrimony, which I had 
only conjured up for your diversion. William Weatherall 5 
has married Mrs. Cotterel's maid. But to take it in its 
truest sense, you will see, my dear F., that news from me 
must become history to you; which I neither profess to 
write, nor indeed care much for reading. No person, 
under a diviner, can with any prospect of veracity, conduct 10 
a correspondence at such an arm's length. Two prophets, 
indeed, might thus interchange intelligence with effect; the 
epoch of the writer (Habakkuk) falling in with the true 
•present time of the deceiver (Daniel) ; but then we are no 
prophets. is 

Then as to sentiment. It fares little better with that. 
This kind of dish, above all, requires to be served up hot : 
or sent off in water-plates, that your friend may have it 
almost as warm as yourself. If it have time to cool, it is 
the most tasteless of all cold meats. I have often smiled at 20 
a conceit of the late Lord C. It seems that travelling some- 
where about Geneva, he came to some pretty green spot, or 
nook, where a willow, or something, hung so fantastically 
and invitingly over a stream — was it? — or a rock? — no 
matter — but the stillness and the repose, after a weary 25 
journey 'tis likely, in a languid moment of his lordship's hot 
restless life, so took his fancy, that he could imagine no 
place so proper, in the event of his death, to lay his bones 
in. This was all very natural and excusable as a senti- 
ment, and shows his character in a very pleasing light. But 30 
when from a passing sentiment it came to be an act; and ; 
when, by a positive testamentary disposal, his remains 



DISTANT CORRESPONDENTS 223 

were actually carried all that way from England ; who was 
there, some desperate sentimentalists excepted, that did not 
ask the question, Why could not his lordship have found a 
spot as solitary, a nook as romantic, a tree as green and 

5 pendant, with a stream as emblematic to his purpose, in 
Surrey, in Dorset, or in Devon? Conceive the sentiment 
boarded up, freighted, entered at the Custom House (start- 
ling the tide-waiters with the novelty), hoisted into a ship. 
Conceive it pawed about and handled between the rude 

10 jests of tarpaulin ruffians — a thing of its delicate texture — 
the salt bilge wetting it till it became as vapid as a damaged 
lustring. Suppose it in material danger (mariners have 
some superstition about sentiments) of being tossed over 
in a fresh gale to some propitiatory shark (spirit of St. 

L5 Gothard, save us from a quietus so foreign to the deviser's 
purpose !) but it has happily evaded a fishy consummation. 
Trace it then to its lucky landing — at Lyons shall we say? 
— I have not the map before me — jostled upon four men's 
shoulders — baiting at this town— stopping to refresh at 

so t'other village — waiting a passport here, a license there; the 
sanction of the magistracy in this district, the concurrence 
of the ecclesiastics in that canton; till at length it arrives 
at its destination, tired out and jaded, from a brisk senti- 
ment, into a feature of silly pride or tawdry, senseless 

-5 affectation. How few sentiments, my dear F., I am afraid 
we can set down, in the sailor's phrase, as quite seaworthy. 
Lastly, as to the agreeable levities, which, though con- 
temptible in bulk, are the twinkling corpuscula which 
should irradiate a right friendly epistle — ^your puns and 

^10 small jests are, I apprehend, extremely circumscribed in 
their sphere of action. They are so far from a capacity of 
being packed up and sent beyond sea, they will scarce 



224 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA 

endure to be transported by hand from this room to the 
next. Their vigor is as the instant of their birth. Their 
nutriment for their brief existence is the intellectual atmos- 
phere of the bystanders: or this last, is the fine slime of 
Nilus — the melior lutus, — ^whose maternal recipiency is as. s 
necessary as the sol pater to their equivocal generation.^ A 
pun hath a hearty kind of present ear-kissing smack with 
it ; you can no more transmit it in its pristine flavor, than 
you can send a kiss. — Have you not tried in some instances 
to palm off a yesterday's pun upon a gentleman, and has it lo 
answered? Not but it was new to his hearing, but it did 

not seem to come new from you. It did not hitch in. It 

I 

w^as like picking up at a village ale-house a two days old 
newspaper. You have not seen it before, but you resent 
the stale thing as an affront. This sort of merchandise isj 
above all requires a quick return. A pun, and its recog- 
nitory laugh, must be co-instantaneous. The one is the 
brisk lightning, the other the fierce thunder. A moment's 
interval, and the link is snapped. A pun is reflected from j 
a friend's face as from a mirror. Who would consult his 20 
sweet visnomy, if the polished surface were two or three ! 
minutes (not to speak of twelve months, my dear F.) in 
giving back its copy? 

I cannot imagine to myself whereabout you are. When 
I try to fix it, Peter Wilkins's island comes across me. 24 
Sometimes you seem to be in the Hades of Thieves. I see 
Diogenes prying among you with his perpetual fruitless 
lantern. What must you be willing by this time to give for 
the sight of an honest man! You must almost have for- 
gotten how we look. And tell me, what your Sydneyites 30 
do? are they th**v*ng all day long? Merciful heaven! 

1 Antony and Cleopatra, I., iii., 69; IL, vii., 29. 



DISTANT CORRESPONDENTS 225 

what property can stand against such a depredation ! The 
kangaroos — ^your Aborigines — do they keep their primitive 
simphcity un-Europe-tainted, with those Httle short fore- 
puds, looking Hke a lesson framed by nature to the pick- 

5 pocket ! Marry, for diving into fobs they are rather lamely 
provided a priori; but if the hue and cry were once up, 
they would show as fair a pair of hind-shifters as the ex- 
pertest loco-motor in the colony. — ^We hear the most im- 
probable tales at this distance. Pray, is it true that the 

10 young Spartans among you are born with six fingers, which 
spoils their scanning? — It must look very odd; but use 
reconciles. For their scansion, it is less to be regretted, for 
if they take it into their heads to be poets, it is odds but they 
turn out, the greater part of them, vile plagiarists. — Is there 

' 15 much difference to see to between the son of a th**f , and 
the grandson? or where does the taint stop? Do you 
bleach in three or in four generations? — I have many ques- 
tions to put, but ten Delphic voyages can be made in a 
shorter time than it will take to satisfy my scruples. — Do 

■20 you grow your own hemp! — What is your staple trade, ex- 
clusive of the national profession, I mean? Your lock- 
smiths, I take it, are some of your great capitalists. 

I am insensibly chattering to you as familiarly as when 
we used to exchange good-morrows out of our old contigu- 

25 ous windows, in pump-famed Hare-court in the Temple. 
Why did you ever leave that quiet corner? — ^Why did I? — 
with its complement of four poor elms, from whose smoke- 
dried barks, the theme of jesting ruralists, I picked my first 
lady-birds ! My heart is as dry as that spring sometimes 

'^30 proves in a thirsty August, when I revert to the space that is 
between us ; a length of passage enough to render obsolete 
the phrases of our English letters before they can reach you. 



226 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA 

But while I talk, I think you hear me, — thoughts dallying 
with vain surmise — 

Aye me! while thee the seas and sounding shores 
Hold far away.^ 

Come back, before I am grown into a very old man, so ^ 
as you shall hardly know me. Come, before Bridget walks 
on crutches. Girls whom you left children have become 
sage matrons, while you are tarrying there. The blooming 

Miss W r (you remember Sally W r) called upon us 

yesterday, an aged crone. Folks, whom you knew, die off iqj 
every year. Formerly, I thought that death was wearing 
out, — I stood ramparted about with so many healthy 
friends. The departure of J. W., two springs back, cor- 
rected my delusion. Since then the old divorcer has been 
busy. If you do not make haste to return, there will be is 
little left to greet you, of me, or mine. 

ON THE ARTIFICIAL COMEDY OF THE LAST : 

CENTURY. ! 

The artificial Comedy, or Comedy of manners, is quite 
extinct on our stage. Congreve and Farquhar show their 
heads once in seven years only, to be exploded and put 
down instantly. The times cannot bear them. Is it for a 20 
few wild speeches, an occasional license of dialogue? I 
think not altogether. The business of their dramatic 
characters will not stand the moral test. We screw every- 
thing up to that. Idle gallantry in a fiction, a dream, the 
passing pageant of an evening, startles us in the same way 25 
as the alarming indications of profligacy in a son or ward 
in real life should startle a parent or guardian. We have 

1 Lycidas, 153-155. 



ARTIFICIAL COMEDY OF LAST CENTURY 227 

no such middle emotions as dramatic interests left. We 
see a stage libertine playing his loose pranks of two hours' 
duration, and of no after consequence, with the severe eyes 
which inspect real vices with their bearings upon two 

5 worlds. We are spectators to a plot or intrigue (not reduci- 
ble in life to the point of strict morality) and take it all for 
truth. We substitute a real for a dramatic person, and 
judge him accordingly. We try him in our courts, from 
which there is no appeal to the dramatis personw, his peers. 

10 W£_have been spoiled with — not sentimental comedy — but 
a tyrant far more pernicious to our pleasures which has suc- 
ceeded to it, the exclusive and all-devouring drama of com- 
mon life; where the moral point is everything; where, in- 
stead of the fictitious half-believed personages of the stage 

15 (the phantoms of old comedy) we recognise ourselves, our 
brothers, aunts, kinsfolks, allies, patrons, enemies, — the 
same as in life, — ^with an interest in what is going on so 
hearty and substantial, that we cannot afford our moral 
judgment, in its deepest and most vital results, to compro- 

20 mise or slumber for a moment. What is there transacting, 
by no modification is made to affect us in any other manner 
than the same events or characters would do in our relation- 
ships of life. We carry our fireside concerns to the theatre 
with us. We do not go thither, like our ancestors, to escape 

25 from the pressure of reality, so much as to confirm our ex- 
perience of it; to make assurance double, and take a bond 
of fate.^ We must live our toilsome lives tw^ice over, a^ it 
was the mournful privilege of Ulysses to descend twice to 
the shades. All that neutral ground of character, which 

30 stood between vice and virtue; or which in fact was in- 
different to neither, where neither properly was called in 

1 Macbeth, IV., i., 83. 



228 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA 

question ; that happy breathing-place from the brethren of 
a perpetual moral questioning — the sanctuary and quiet 
Alsatia of hunted casuistry— is broken up and disfranchised 
as injurious to the interests of society. The privileges of 
the place are taken away by law. We dare not dally with s 
images, or names, of wrong. We bark like foolish dogs at 
shadows. We dread infection from the scenic representa- 
tion of disorder; and fear a painted pustule. In our 
anxiety that our morality should not take cold, we wrap it 
up in a great blanket surtout of precaution against the lo 
breeze and sunshine. 

I confess for myself that (with no great delinquencies to 
answer for) I am glad for a season to take an airing beyond 
the diocese of the strict conscience, — not to live always in 
the precincts of the law courts, — but now and then, for a is 
dream-while or so,, to imagine a world with no meddling 
restrictions — to get into recesses, whither the hunter cannot 
follow me — 

Secret shades 

Of woody Ida's inmost grove, 20 

While yet there was no fear of Jove — ^ 

I come back to my cage and my restraint the fresher and 
more healthy for it. I wear my shackles more contentedly 
for having respired the breath of an imaginary freedom. I 
do not know how it is with others, but I feel the better 2s 
always for the perusal of one of Congreve's — ^nay, why 
should I not add even of Wycherley's — comedies. I am 
the gayer at least for it; and I could never connect those 
sports of a witty fancy in any shape with any result to be 
drawn from them to imitation in real life. They are a so 
world of themselves almost as much as fairyland. Take 

1 II Penseroso, 28flf. 



ARTIFICIAL COMEDY OF LAST CENTURY 229 

one of their characters, male or female (with few exceptions 
they are alike), and place it in a modem play, and my 
virtuous indignation shall rise against the profligate wretch 
as warmly as the Catos of the pit could desire; because in 

5 a modern play I am to judge of the right and the wrong. 
The standard of 'police is the measure of 'political justice. 
The atmosphere will blight it, it cannot live here. It has 
got into a moral world, wh-ere it has no business, from 
which it must needs fall headlong; as dizzy and incapable 

10 of making a stand, as a Swedenborgian bad spirit that has 
wandered unawares into the sphere of one of his Good 
Men, or Angels. But in its own world do we feel the 
creature is so very bad? — ^The Fainalls and the Mirabels, 
the Dorimants and the Lady Touchwoods, in their own 

15 sphere, do not offend my moral sense; in fact, they do not 
appeal to it at all. They seem engaged in their proper 
element. They break through no laws, or conscientious 
restraints. They know of none. They have got out of 
Christendom into the land— what shall I call it? — of 

20 euckoldry — the Utopia of gallantry, where pleasure is 
duty, and the manners perfect freedom. It is altogether a 
speculative scene of things, which has no reference whatever 
to the world that is. No good person can be justly offended 
as a spectator, because no good person suffers on the stage. 

25 Judged morally, every character in these plays — the few 
exceptions only are mistakes — is alike essentially vain and 
worthless. The great art of Congreve is especially shown 
in this, that he has entirely excluded from the scenes, — 
some little generosities in the part of Angelica perhaps 

30 excepted,- — not only anything like a faultless character, but 
any pretensions to goodness or good feelings whatsoever. 
Whether he did this designedly, or instinctively, the effect 



230 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA 

is as happy, as the design (if design) was bold. I used to 
wonder at the strange power which his Way of the World 
in particular possesses of interesting you all along in the 
pursuits of characters, for whom you absolutely care nothing 
— for you neither hate nor love his personages — and I think 
it is owing to this very indifference for any, that you endure 
the whole. He has spread a privation of moral light, I will 
call it, rather than by the ugly name of palpable darkness, 
over his creations ; and his shadows flit before you without 
distinction or preference. Had he introduced a good lo 
character, a single gush of moral feeling, a revulsion of the 
judgment to actual life and actual duties, the impertinent 
Goshen would have only lighted to the discovery of de- 
formities, which now are none, because we think them none. 

Translated into real life, the characters of his, and his is 
friend Wycherley's dramas, are profligates and strumpets, — 
the business of their brief existence, the undivided pursuit 
of lawless gallantry. No other spring of action, or possible 
motive of conduct, is recognised ; principles which, univer- 
sally acted upon, must reduce this frame of things to a 20 
chaos. But we do them wrong in so translating them. 
No such effects are produced in their world. When we are 
among them, we are amongst a chaotic people. We are not 
to judge them by our usages. No reverend institutions are 
insulted by their proceedings, — ^for they have none among 25 
them. No peace of families is violated, — for no family ties 
exist among them. No purity of the marriage bed is 
stained, — for none is supposed to have a being. No deep 
affections are disquieted, — no holy wedlock bands are 
snapped asunder, — for affection's depth and wedded faith 30 
are not of the growth of that soil. There is neither right 
nor wrong, — gratitude or its opposite, — claim or duty, — 



ARTIFICIAL COMEDY OF LAST CENTURY 231 

paternity or sonship. Of what consequence is it to virtue, 
or how is she at all concerned about it, whether Sir Simon, 
or Dapperwit, steal away Miss Martha; or who is the father 
of Lord Froth's, or Sir Paul Pliant's children? 

5 The whole is a passing pageant, where we should sit as 
unconcerned at the issues, for life or death, as at a battle of 
the frogs and mice. But like Don Quixote, we take part 
against the puppets, and quite as impertinently. We dare 
not contemplate an Atlantis, a scheme, out of which our 

10 coxcombical moral seiise is for a little transitory ease ex- 
cluded. We have not the courage to imagine a state of 
things for which there is neither reward nor punishment. 
We cling to the painful necessities of shame and blame. 
We would indict our very dreams. 

15 Amidst the mortifying circumstances attendant upon 
growing old, it is something to have seen the School for 
Scandal in its glory. This comedy grew out of Congreve 
and Wycherley, but gathered some allays of the sentimental 
comedy which followed theirs. It is impossible that it 

20 should be now acted, though it continues, at long intervals, 
to be announced in the bills. Its hero, when Palmer 
played it at least, was Joseph Surface. When I remember 
the gay boldness, the graceful solemn plausibility, the 
measured step, the insinuating voice — to express it in a 

25 word — the downright acW villany of the part, so different 
from the pressure of conscious actual wickedness, — the 
hypocritical assumption of hypocrisy, — ^which made Jack so 
deservedly a favorite in that character, I must needs con- 
clude the present generation of playgoers more virtuous 

30 than myself, or more dense. I freely confess that he 
divided the palm with me with his better brother; that, in 
fact, I liked him quite as well. Not but there are passages, 



232 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA 

— like that, for instance, where Joseph is made to refuse a 
pittance to a poor relation, — incongnities which Sheridan 
was forced upon by the attempt to join the artificial with 
the sentimental comedy, either of which must destroy the 
other — but over these obstructions Jack's manner floated 5 
him so lightly, that a refusal from him no more shocked 
you, than the easy compliance of Charles gave you in reality 
any pleasure J you got over the paltry question as quickly 
as you could, to get back into the regions of pure comedy, 
where no cold moral reigns. The highly artificial manner 10 
of Palmer in this character counteracted every disagreeable 
impression which you might have received from the con- " 
trast, supposing them real, between the two brothers. You 
did not believe in Joseph with the same faith with which 
you believed in Charles. The latter was a pleasant reality, is 
the former a no less pleasant poetical foil to it. The 
comedy, I have said, is incongruous; a mixture of Con- 
greve with sentimental incompatibilities: the gaiety upon 
the whole is buoyant; but it required the consummate art 
of Palmer to reconcile the discordant elements. 20 

A player with Jack's talents, if we had one now, would 
not dare to do the part in the same manner. He would 
instinctively avoid every turn which might tend to un- 
realise, and so to make the character fascinating. He must 
take his cue from his spectators, who would expect a bad 2S 
man and a good man as rigidly opposed to each other as 
the death-beds of those geniuses are contrasted in the 
prints, which I am sorry to say have disappeared from the 
windows of my old friend Carrington Bowles, of St. Paul's 
Churchyard memory — (an exhibition as venerable as the so 
adjacent cathedral, and almost coeval) of the bad and good 
man at the hour of death ; where the ghastly apprehensions 



ARTIFICIAL COMEDY OF LAST CENTURY 233 

of the former, — and truly the grim phantom with his reality 
of a toasting-fork is not to be despised, — so finely contrast 
with the meek complacent kissing of the rod, — taking it in 
like honey and butter, — ^with which the latter submits to 

5 the scythe of the gentle bleeder, Time, who wields his 
lancet with the apprehensive finger of a popular young 
ladies' surgeon. What flesh, like loving grass,^ would not 
covet to meet half-way the stroke of such a delicate mower? 
— John Palmer was twice an actor in this exquisite part. 

10 He Avas playing to you all the while that he was playing 
upon Sir Peter and his lady. You had the first intimation 
pf a sentiment before it was on his lips. His altered voice 
was meant to you, and you were to suppose that his fic- 
titious co-flutterers on the stage perceived nothing at all 

is of it. What was it to you if that half-reality, the husband, 
was over-reached by the puppetry — or the thin thing (Lady 
Teazle's reputation) was persuaded it was dying of a 
plethory? The fortunes of Othello and Desdemona was 
not concerned in it. Poor Jack has passed from the stage 

20 in good time, that he did not live to this our age of serious- 
ness. The pleasant old Teazle King, too, is gone in good 
time. His manner would scarce have past current in our 
day. We must love or hate — acquit or condemn — censure 
or pity — exert our detestable coxcombry of moral judgment 

25 upon everything. Joseph Surface, to go down now, must 
be a downright revolting villain — no compromise — his first 
appearance must shock and give horror — his specious 
plausibilities, which the pleasurable faculties of our fathers 
welcomed with such hearty greetings, knowing that no 

30 harm (dramatic harm even) could come, or was meant tc 
come of them, must inspire a cold and killing aversion. 

1 Isaiah, xL, 6-8. 



234 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA 

Charles (the real canting person of the scene — for the 
hypocrisy of Joseph has its ulterior legitimate ends, but 
his brother's professions of a good heart centre in down- 
right self-satisfaction) must be loved, and Joseph hated. 
To balance one disagreeable reality with another, Sir Peter 
Teazle must be no longer the comic idea of a fretful old 
bachelor bridegroom, whose teasings (while King acted it) 
were evidently as much played off at you, as they were 
meant to concern anybody on the stage, — he must be a real 
person, capable in law of sustaining an injury — a person lo 
towards whom duties are to be acknowledged — the genuine 
crim-con. antagonist of the villanous seducer Joseph. To 
realise him more, his sufferings under his unfortunate 
match must have the downright pungency of life — must 
(or should) make you not mirthful but uncomfortable, just 15 
as the same predicament would move you in a neighbor or ' 
old friend. The delicious scenes which give the play its 
name and zest, must affect you in the same serious manner 
as if you heard the reputation of a dear female friend at- 
tacked in your real presence. Crabtree, and Sir Benjamin 20 
— those poor snakes that live but in the sunshine of your 
mirth — must be ripened by this hot-bed process of realisa- 
tion into asps or amphisbsenas ;^ and Mrs. Candour — O! 
frightful! become a hooded serpent. Oh, who that re- 
members Parsons and Dodd — the wasp and butterfly of the 25 
School for Scandal — in those two characters ; and charming 
natural INiiss Pope, the perfect gentlewoman as distin- 
guished from the fine lady of comedy, in this latter part — 
w^ould forego the true scenic delight — the escape from life — 
the oblivion of consequences — the holiday barring out of 30 
the pedant Reflection — those Saturnalia of two or three 

1 Paradise Lost, X., 524. 



ARTIFICIAL COMEDY OF LAST CENTURY 235 

brief hours, well won from the world — to sit instead at one 
of our modern plays — to have his coward conscience (that 
forsooth must not be left for a moment) stimulated with 
perpetual appeals — dulled rather, and blunted, as a faculty 

5 without repose must be — and his moral vanity pampered 
with images of notional justice, notional beneficence, lives 
saved without the spectators' risk, and fortunes given away 
that cost the author nothing? 

No piece was, perhaps, ever so completely cast in all its 

10 parts as this manager's comedy. Miss Farren had suc- 
ceeded to Mrs. Abingdon in Lady Teazle; and Smith, the 
original Charles, had retired, when I first saw it. The rest 
of the characters, with very slight exceptions, remained. I 
remember it was then the fashion to cry down John Kemble 

15 who took the part of Charles after Smith; but, I thought, 
very unjustly. Smith, I fancy, was more airy, and took the 
eye with a certain gaiety of person. He brought with him 
no sombre recollections of tragedy. He had not to expiate 
the fault of having pleased beforehand in lofty declamation. 

20 He had no sins of Hamlet or of Richard to atone for. 
His failure in these parts was a passport to success in one 
of so opposite a tendency. But, as far as I could judge, 
the weighty sense of Kemble made up for more personal 
incapacity than he had to answer for. His harshest tones 

25 in this part came steeped and dulcified in good humor. He 
made his defects a grace. His exact declamatory manner, 
as he managed it, only served to convey the points of his 
dialogue with more precision. It seemed to head the shafts 
to carry them deeper. Not one of his sparkling sentences 

30 was lost. I remember minutely how he delivered each in 
succession, and cannot by any effort imagine how any of 
them could be altered for the better. No man could 



236 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA 

deliver brilliant dialogue — the dialogue of Congreve or of 
Wycherley — because none understood it — half so well as 
John Kemble. His Valentine, in Love for Love, was to 
my recollection, faultless. He flagged sometimes in the 
intervals of tragic passion. He would slumber over the 5 
level parts of an heroic character. His Macbeth has been 
known to nod. But he always seemed to me to be par- 
ticularly alive to pointed and witty dialogue. The relaxing 
levities of tragedy have not been touched by any since him 
— the playful court-bred spirit in which he condescended to 10 
the players in Hamlet — the sportive relief which he threw 
into the darker shades of Richard — disappeared with him. 
John had his sluggish moods, his torpors — but they were 
the halting-stones and resting-place of his tragedy — ^politic 
savings, and fetches of the breath — husbandry of the lungs, 15 
where nature pointed him to be an economist — rather, I 
think, than errors of the judgment. They were, at worst, 
^ess painful than the eternal tormenting unappeasable 
vigilance, — the ''lidless dragon eyes,"^ of present fashion- 
able tragedy.* 20 

[The story of his swallowing opium pills to keep him 
lively on the first night of a certain tragedy, we may presume 
to be a piece of retaliatory pleasantry, on the part of the 
suffering author; but, indeed, John had the art of diffusing 
a complacent equable dulness (which you knew not where 25 
to quarrel with), over a piece which he did not like, beyond 
any of his contemporaries. John Kemble had made up 
his mind early, that all the good tragedies which could be 
written, had been written; and he resented any new attempt. 
His shelves were full. The old standards were scope 30 

1 Coleridge, Ode to the Departing Year. 

*What follows was omitted from the essay in the collected edition. 



ARTIFICIAL COMEDY OF LAST CENTURY 237 

enough for his ambition. He ranged in them absolutely 
— and fair "in Otway, full in Shakspeare shone."^ He 
succeeded to the old lawful thrones, and did not care to 
adventure bottomry with a Sir Edward Mortimer or any 

5 casual speculator that offered. I remember, too actually 
for my peace, the deadly extinguisher which he put upon 
my friend G.'s **Antonio." G., satiate with visions of 
political justice (possibly not to be realised in our time), 
or willing to let the sceptical worldlings see that his antici- 

10 pations of the future did not preclude a warm sympathy for 
men as they are and have been — ^wrote a tragedy. He 
chose a story, affecting, romantic, Spanish — the plot simple, 
without being naked — the incidents uncommon, without 
being overstrained. Antonio, who gives the name to the 

15 piece, is a sensitive young Castilian, who, in a fit of his 
country honor, immolates his sister — 

But I must not anticipate the catastrophe — the play, 
reader, is extant in choice English — and you will employ a 
spare half-crown not injudiciously in the quest of it. 

20 The conception was bold, and the denouement — the time 
and place in which the hero of it existed, considered — not 
much out of keeping; yet it must be confessed, that it 
required a delicacy of handling both from the author and 
the performer, so as not much to shock the prejudices of a 

25 modern English audience. G., in my opinion, had done 
his part. 

John, who was in familiar habits with the philosopher, 
had undertaken to play Antonio. Great expectations were 
formed. A philosopher's first play was a new era. The 

30 night arrived. I was favored with a seat in an advan- 
tageous box, between the author and his friend M . 

1 Pope's Imitations of Horace. 



238 THE ESSAYS' OF ELIA 

G. sat cheerful and confident. In his friend M.'s looks, 
who had perused the manuscript, I read some terror. 
Antonio, in the person of John Philip Kemble, at length 
appeared, starched out in a ruff which no one could dis- 
pute, and in most irreproachable mustachios. John always 5 
dressed most provokingly correct on these occasions. The 
fiirst act swept by, solemn and silent. It went off, as G. as- 
sured M., exactly as the opening act of a piece — the protasis 
— should do. The cue of the spectators was, to be mute. 
The characters were but in their introduction. The pas- 10 
sions and the incidents would be developed hereafter. 
Applause hitherto would be impertinent. Silent attention 
was the effect all-desirable. Poor M. acquiesced — but in 
his honest, friendly face I could discern a working which 
told how much more acceptable the plaudit of a single 15 
hand (however misplaced) would have been than all this 
reasoning. The second act (as in duty bound) rose a little 
in interest, but still John kept his forces under — in policy, 
as G. would have it — and the audience were most com- 
placently attentive. The protasis, in fact, was scarcely 20 
unfolded. The interest would warm in the next act, 
against which a special incident was provided. M. wiped 
his cheek, flushed with a friendly perspiration — 'tis M.'s 
way of showing his zeal — ''from every pore of him a per- 
fume falls. "^ — I honor it above Alexander's.^ He had once 25 
or twice during this act joined his palms, in a feeble, en- 
deavor to elicit a sound — they emitted a solitary noise, 
without an echo — there was no deep to answer to his deep.^ 
G. repeatedly begged him to be quiet. The third act at 
length brought him on the scene which was to warm the 30 

1 Lee, The Kival Queens. 

2 See note. 

3 Psalms, xlii., 7. 



ARTIFICIAL COMEDY OF LAST CENTURY 239 

piece, progressively, to the final flaming forth of the catas- 
trophe. A philosophic calm settled upon the clear brow of 
G., as it approached. The lips of M. quivered. A chal- 
lenge was held forth upon the stage, and there was a 
5 promise of a fight. The pit roused themselves on this 
extraordinary occasion, and, as their manner is, seemed 
disposed to make a ring, — when suddenly, Antonio, who 
was the challenged, turning the tables upon the hot chal- 
lenger, Don Gusman (who, by the way, should have had his 

10 sister) baulks his humor, and the pit's reasonable expec- 
tation at the same time, with some speeches out of the new 
philosophy against duelling. The audience were here 
fairly caught — their courage was up, and on the alert — a 
few blows, ding-dong, as R s, the dramatist, afterwards 

15 expressed it to me, might have done the business, when their 
most exquisite moral sense was suddenly called in to assist 
in the mortifying negation of their own pleasure. They 
could not applaud for disappointment; they would not 
condemn for morality's sake. The interest stood stone 

20 still; and John's manner was not calculated to unpetrify it. 
It was Christmas time, and the atmosphere furnished some 
pretext for asthmatic affections. One began to cough — 
his neighbor sympathised with him — till a cough became 
epidemical. But when, from being half artificial ^n the 

25 pit, the cough got frightfully naturalised among the fic- 
titious persons, of the drama, and Antonio himself (albeit 
it was not set down in the stage directions) seemed more 
intent upon relieving his own lungs than the distresses of 
the author and his friends, then G. "first knew fear;"^ and, 

30 mildly turning to M., intimated that he had not been aware 
that Mr. K. labored under a cold ; and that the performance 

1 Paradise Lost, VI., 327. 



240 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA 

might possibly have been postponed with advantage for 
some nights farther — still keeping the same serene counte- 
nance, while M. sweat like a bull. It would be invidious 
to pursue the fates of this ill-starred evening. In vain did 
the plot thicken in the scenes that followed ; in vain did the s 
dialogue wax more passionate and stirring, and the prog- 
ress of the sentiment point more and more clearly to the 
arduous development which impended. In vain the 
action was accelerated, while the acting stood still. From 
the beginning John had taken his stand ; had wound him- lo 
self up to an even tenor of stately declamation, from which 
no exigence of dialogue or person could make him swerve 
for an instant. To dream of his rising with the scene (the 
common trick of tragedians) was preposterous; for, from 
the onset, he had planted himself, as upon a terrace, on is 
an eminence vastly above the audience, and he kept that 
sublime level to the end. He looked from his throne of 
elevated sentiment upon the under-world of spectators with 
a most sovereign and becoming contempt. There was 
excellent pathos delivered out to them: an they would 20 
receive it, so; an they would not receive it, so; there was 
no offence against decorum in all this ; nothing to condemn, 
to damn. Not an irreverent symptom of a sound was to 
be heard. The procession of verbiage stalked on through 
four and five acts, no one venturing to predict what would 25 
come of it, when towards the winding up of the latter, 
Antonio, with an irrelevancy that seemed to stagger Elvira 
herself — for she had been coolly arguing the point of 
honor with him — suddenly whips out a poniard, and stabs 
his sister to the heart. The effect was as if a murder had 30 
been committed in cold blood. The whole house rose up 
in clamorous indignation, demanding justice. The feel- 



THE PRAISE OF CHIMNEY-SWEEPERS 241 

ing rose far above hisses. I believe at that instant, if they 
could have got him, they would have torn the unfortunate 
author to pieces. Not that the act itself was so exorbitant, 
or of a complexion different from what they themselves 

5 would have applauded upon another occasion, in a Brutus 
or an Appius, but for want of attending to Antonio's words, 
which palpably led to the expectation of no less dire an 
event, instead of being seduced by his manner, which 
seemed to promise a sleep of less alarming nature than it 

10 was his cue to inflict upon Elvira; they found themselves 
betrayed into an accompliceship of murder, a perfect mis- 
prision of parricide, while they dreamed of nothing less. 
^I., I believe, was the only person who suffered acutely 
from the failure ; for G. thenceforward, with a serenity un- 

15 attainable but by the true philosophy, abandoning a pre- 
carious popularity, retired into his fasthold of speculation, 
— the drama in which the world was to be his tiring-room, 
and remote posterity his applauding spectators, at once, 
and actors.] 

THE PRAISE OF CHIMNEY-SWEEPERS. 

20 I LIKE to meet a sweep — understand me — not a grown 
sweeper — old chimney-sweepers are by no means attractive 
— but one of those tender novices, blooming through their 
first nigritude, the maternal washings not quite effaced from 
the cheek — such as come forth with the dawn, or somewhat 

25 earlier, with their little professional notes sounding like the 
'pee'p peep of a young sparrow; or liker to the matin lark 
should I pronounce them, in their aerial ascents not seldom 
anticipating the sun-rise? 

I have a kindly yearning towards these dim specks — poor 

30 blots — innocent blacknesses — 



242 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA 

I reverence these young Africans of our own growth — 
these almost clergy imps, who sport their cloth without 
assumption ; and from their little pulpits (the tops of chim- 
neys), in the nipping air of a December morning, preach a 
lesson of patience to mankind. s 

When a child, what a mysterious pleasure it was to wit- 
ness their operation ! to see a chit no bigger than one's self 
enter, one knew not by what process, into what seemed the 
fauces Averni — to pursue him in imagination, as he went 
sounding on through so many dark stifling caverns, horrid lo 
shades! — to shudder with the idea that "now, surely, he 
must be lost for ever!" — to revive at hearing his feeble 
s^out of discovered daylight — and then (O fulness of de- 
light) running out of doors, to come just in time to see the 
sable phenomenon emerge in safety, the brandished is 
weapon of his art victorious like some flag waved over a 
conquered citadel! I seem to remember having been told, 
that a bad sweep was once left in a stack with his brush, to 
indicate which way the wind blew. It was an awful spec- 
tacle certainly; not much unlike the old stage direction in 20 
Macbeth, where the "Apparition of child crowned with a 
trefe in his hand rises. "^ 

Reader, if thou meetest one of these small gentry in thy 
early rambles, it is good to give him a penny. It is better 
to give him twopence. If it be starving weather, and to the 25 
proper troubles of his hard occupation, a pair of kibed heels 
(no unusual accompaniment) be superadded, the demand 
on thy humanity will surely rise to a tester. 

There is a composition, the groundwork of which I have 
understood to be the sweet wood yclept sassafras. This 30 
wood boiled down to a kind of tea, and tempered with an 

1 Macbeth, IV., i. 



TH'E PRAISE OF CHIMNEY-SWEEPERS 243 

infusion of milk and sugar, hath to some tastes a delicacy 
beyond the China luxury. I know not how thy palate may 
relish it; for myself, with every deference to the judicious 
Mr. Read, who hath time out of mind kept open a shop 
5 (the only one he avers in London) for the vending of this 
"wholesome and pleasant beverage," on the south side of 
Fleet Street, as thou approachest Bridge Street — the only 
Salopian house,—! have never yet adventured to dip my 
own particular lip in a basin of his commended ingredients 

10 — cautious premonition to the olfactories constantly whis- 
pering to me, that my stomach must infallibly, with all due 
courtesy, decline it. Yet I have seen palates, otherwise not 
uninstructed in dietetical elegances, sup it up with avidity. 
I know not by what particular confirmation of the organ 

15 it happens, but I have always found that this composition 
is surprisingly gratifying to the palate of a young chimney- 
sweeper — whether the oily particles (sassafras is slightly 
oleaginous) do attenuate and soften the fuliginous con- 
cretions, which are sometimes found (in dissections) to 

20 adhere to the roof of the mouth in these unfledged prac- 
titioners ; or whether Nature, sensible that she had mingled 
too much of bitter wood in the lot of these raw victims, 
caused to grow out of the earth her sassafras for U sweet 
lenitive — but so it is, that no possible taste or odor to the 

25 senses of a young chimney-sweeper can convey a delicate 
excitement comparable to this mixture. Being penniless, 
they will yet hang their black heads over the ascending 
steam, to gratify one sense, if possible, seemingly no less 
pleased than those domestic animals — cats — when they 

30 purr over a new-found sprig of valerian. There is some- 
thing more in these sympathies than philosophy can incul- 
cate. 



244 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA 

Now albeit Mr. Read boasteth, not without reason, that 
his is the only Salopian house; yet be it known to thee, 
reader — if thou art one who keepest what is called good 
hours, thou art happily ignorant of the fact — ^he hath a race 
of industrious imitators, who from stalls, and under open 
sky, dispense the same savory mess to humbler customers, 
at the dead time of the dawn, when (as extremes meet) the 
rake, reeling home from his midnight cups, and the hard- 
handed artisan leaving his bed to resume the premature 
labors of the day, jostle, not unfrequently. to the manifest i 
disconcerting of the former, for the honors of the pave- 
ment. It is the time when, in summer, between the ex- 
pired and the not yet relumined kitchen-fires, the kennels of 
our fair metropolis give forth their least satisfactory odors. 
The rake who wisheth to dissipate his o'er night vapors in i 
more grateful coffee, curses the ungenial fume, as he 
passeth; but the artisan stops to taste, and blesses the 
fragrant breakfast. 

This is Saloop — the precocious herb-woman's darling — 
the delight of the early gardener, who transports his smok- 2 
ing cabbages by break of day from Hammersmith to 
Covent Garden's famed piazzas — the delight, and, oh I 
fear, too often the envy, of the unpennied sweep. Him, 
shouldst thou haply encounter, with his dim visage pendent 
over the grateful steam, regale him with a sumptuous basin 2 
(it will cost thee but three halfpennies) and a slice of deli- 
cate bread and butter (an added halfpenny) so may thy 
culinary fires, eased of the o'ercharged secretions from thy 
worse-placed hospitalities, curl up a lighter volume to the 
welkin — so may the descending soot never taint thy costly 3, 
well-ingredienced soups — nor the odious cry, quick-reach- 
ing from street to street, of the fired chimney, invite the 



I 



THE PRAISE OF CHIMNEY-SWEEPERS 245 

rattling engines from ten adjacent parishes, to disturb for a 
casual scintillation thy peace and pocket! 

I am by nature extremely susceptible of street affronts; 
the jeers and taunts of the populace ; the low-bred triumph 

5 they display over the casual trip, or splashed stocking, of a 
gentleman. Yet can I endure the jocularity of a young 
sweep with something more than forgiveness. In the last 
winter but one, pacing along Cheapside with my accus- 
tomed precipitation when I walk westward, a treacherous 

10 slide brought me upon my back in an instant; I scrambled 
up with pain and shame enough — ^yet outwardly trying to 
face it down, as if nothing had happened — when the roguish 
grin of one of these young wits encountered me. There 
he stood, pointing me out with his dusky finger to the mob, 

15 and to a poor woman (I suppose his mother) in particular, 
till the tears for the exquisiteness of the fun (so he thought 
it) worked themselves out at the corners of his poor red 
eyes, red from many a previous weeping, and soot-inflamed, 
yet twinkling through all with such a joy, snatched out of 

20 desolation, that Hogarth but Hogarth has got him 

already (how could he miss him?) in the March to Finchley, 

grinning at the pie-man there he stood, as he stands in 

the picture, irremovable, as if the jest was to last for ever — ■ 
with such a maximum of glee, and minimum of mischief, 

25 in his mirth — for the grin of a genuine sweep hath abso- 
lutely no malice in it — that I could have been content, if 
the honor of a gentleman might endure it, to have remained 
his butt and his mockery till midnight. 

I am by theory obdurate to the seductiveness of what are 

30 called a fine set of teeth. Every pair of rosy lips (the 
ladies must pardon me) is a casket presumably holding 



246 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA 

such jewels;^ but, methinks, they should take leave to 
"air" them as frugally as possible. The fine lady, or fine 
gentleman, who show me their teeth, show me bones. Yet 
must I confess, that from the mouth of a true sweep a 
display (even to ostentation) of those white and shining 
ossifications, strikes me as an agreeable anomaly in man- 
ners, and an allowable piece of foppery. It is, as when 

A sable cloud 
Turns forth her silver lining on the night. ^ 

It is like some remnant of gentry not quite extinct; a badge lo 
of better days; a hint of nobilit}^: — and, doubtless, under 
the obscuring darkness and double night of their forlorn 
disguisement, oftentimes lurketh good blood, and gentle 
conditions, derived from lost ancestr}% and a lapsed pedi- 
gree. The premature apprenticements of these tender 15 
victims give but too much encouragement, I fear, to clan- 
destine, and almost infantile abductions; the seeds of 
civility and true courtesy, so often discernible in these 
young grafts (not othervi'ise to be accounted for) plainly 
hint at some forced adoptions; many noble Rachels mourn- 20 
ing for their children," even in our days, countenance the 
fact; the tales of fairy-spiriting may shadow a lamentable 
verity, and the recovery of the young Montagu be but a 
solitary instance of good fortune, out of many irreparable 
and hopeless defiliations. 25- 

In one of the state-beds at Arundel Castle, a few years 
since — under a ducal canopy — (that seat of the Howards is 
an object of curiosity to visitors, chiefly for its beds, in 
which the late Duke was especially a connoisseur) — encircled 
with curtains of delicatest crimson, with starry coronets 30 

1 Cymbeline, II., iv., 96. 

2 CoMus, 221. 

3 Jebemiah, xxxi., 15. 



i 



THE PRAISE OF CHIMNEY-SWEEPERS 247 



inwoven — folded between a pair of sheets whiter and softer 
than the lap where Venus lulled Ascanius^ — was discovered 
by chance, after all methods of search had failed, at noon- 
day, fast asleep, a lost chimney-sweeper. The little crea- 

5 ture, having somehow confounded his passage among the 

intricacies of those lordly chimneys, by some unknown 

aperture had alighted upon this magnificent chamber- and, 

& tired with his tedious explorations, was unable to resist 

the delicious invitement to repose, which he there saw 

10 exhibited; so, creeping betw^een the sheets very quietly, 
laid his black head upon the pillow, and slept Kke a young 
Howard. 

Such is the account given to the visitors at the Castle.— 
1^ But I cannot help seeming to perceive a confirmation of 

15 what I have just hinted at in this story. A high instinct 
was at work in the case, or I am mistaken. Is it probable 
that a poor child of that description, with whatever weari- 
ness he might be visited, would have ventured, under such 
a penalty as he would be taught to expect, to uncover the 

20 sheets of a Duke's bed, and deliberately to lay himself down 
between them, when the rug, or the carpet, presented an 
obvious couch, still far above his pretensions — is this 
probable, I would ask, if the great power of nature, which 
I contend for, had not been manifested within him, prompt- 

25 ing to the adventure? Doubtless this young nobleman (for 
such my mind misgives me that he must be) was allured by 
some memory, not amounting to full consciousness, of his 
condition in infancy, when he was used to be lapt by his 
mother, or his nurse, in just such sheets as he there found, 
into which he was now but creepimg back as into his proper 
incunabula, and resting place. By no other theory, than by 

1 Virgil, Akneid, I., 696. 



248 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA 

this sentiment of a pre-existent state (as I may call it), can 
I explain a deed so venturous, and, indeed, upon any other 
system, so indecorous, in this tender, but unseasonable, »; 
sleeper. || 

My pleasant friend Jem White was so impressed with a 
belief of metamorphoses like this frequently taking place, 
that in some sort to reverse the wrongs of fortune in these 
poor changelings, he instituted an annual feast of chimney- 
sweepers, at which it was his pleasure to officiate as host 
and waiter. It was a solemn supper held in Smithfield, ^^ 
upon the yearly return of the fair of St. Bartholomew. 
Cards were issued a week before to the master-sweeps in 
and about the metropolis, confining the invitation to their 
younger fry. Now and then an elderly stripling would get 
in among us, and be good-naturedly winked at; but our ^^ 
main body were infantry. One unfortunate wight, indeed, 
who, relying upon his dusky suit, had intruded himself into 
our party, but by tokens was providentially discovered in 
time to be no chimney-sweeper (all is not soot which looks 
so), was quoited out of the presence with universal indigna- 
tion, as not having on the wedding garment;^ but in general 
the greatest harmony prevailed. The place chosen was 
a convenient spot among the pens, at the north side of the 
fair, not so far distant as to be impervious to the agreeable 
hubbub of that vanity; but remote enough not to be 
obvious to the interruption of every gaping spectator in it. 
The guests assembled about seven. In those little tempo- 
rary parlors three tables were spread with napery, not so 
fine as substantial, and at every board a comely hostess 
presided with her pan of hissing sausages. The nostrils of 
the young rogues dilated at the savor. James White, as 

1 Matthew, xxiif, 11-14. 



20 



25 



30 



THE PRAISE OF CHIMNEY-SWEEPERS 249 

head waiter, had charge of the first table ; and myself, with 
our trusty companion Bigod, ordinarily ministered to the 
other two. There was clamoring and jostling, you may 
be sure, w4io should get at the first table — for Rochester in 

5 his maddest days could not have done the humors of the 
scene with more spirit than my friend. After some general 
expression of thanks for the honor the company had done 
him, his inaugural ceremony was to clasp the greasy waist 
of old dame Ursula (the fattest of the three), that stood 

(10 frying and fretting, half-blessing, half-cursing, '^the gentle- 
man," and imprint upon her chaste lips a tender salute, 
whereat the universal host would set up a shout that tore 
the concave, while hundreds of grinning teeth startled the 
night with their brightness. O it was a pleasure to see the 

115 sable younkers lick in the unctuous meat, with his more 
unctuous sayings — how he w^ould fit the tit-bits to the puny 
mouths, reserving the lengthier links for the seniors — ^liow 
he would intercept a morsel even in the jaws of some 
young desperado, declaring it "must to the pan again to be 

Bjo browned, for it was not fit for a gentleman's eating" — ^liow 
he would recommend this slice of white bread, or that piece 
of kissing-crust, to a tender juvenile, advising them all to 
have a care of cracking their teeth, which were their best 
patrimony,— -how genteelly he would deal about the small 

(*s ale, as if it were wine, naming the brewer, and protesting, if 
it were not good, he should lose their custom; with a special 
recommendation to wipe the lip before drinking. Then 
we had our toasts — "The King," — the "Cloth," — which, 
whether they understood or not, was equally diverting and 

m flattering; — and for a crowning sentiment, which never 
failed, "May the Brush supersede the Laurel." All these, 
and fifty other fancies, which were rather felt than com- 



250 • THE ESSAYS OF ELIA 

prehended by his guests, would he utter, standing upon 
tables, and prefacing every sentiment with a "Gentlemen, 
give me leave to propose so and so," which was a prodigious 
comfort to those young orphans; and every now and then 
stuffing into his mouth (for it did not do to be squeamish 
on these occasions) indiscriminate pieces of those reeking 
sausages, which pleased them mightily, and was the 
savoriest part, you may believe, of the entertainment.* 

Golden lads and lasses must, 

As chimney-sweepers, come to dust.^ 

James White is extinct, and with him these suppers 
have long ceased. He carried away with him half the fun 
of the world when he died — of my world at least. His old 
clients look for him among the pens; and, missing him, 
reproach the altered feast of St. Bartholomew, and the is' 
glory of Smithfield departed for ever. 

A COMPLAINT OF THE DECAY OF BEGGARS 
IN THE METROPOLIS. 

The all-sweeping besom of societarian reformation— your 
only modern Alcides' club to rid the time of its abuses — is 
uplift with many-handed sway to extirpate the last flutter- 
ing tatters of the bugbear Mendicity from the metropolis. 20 
Scrips, w^allets, bags — staves, dogs, and crutches — the 
whole mendicant fraternity with all their baggage, are fast 
posting out of the purlieus of this eleventh persecution. 
From the crowded crossing, from the corners of streets and 
turnings of alleys, the parting Genius of Beggary is "with 25 
sighing sent." 

1 Cymbeline IV., ii., 262. 



DECAY OF BEGGARS IN THE METROPOLIS 251 

P I do not approve of this wholesale going to work, this 
impertinent crusado, or helium ad exterminationem, pro- 
claimed against a species. Much good might be sucked 
from these Beggars. 

5 They were the oldest and the honorablest form of 
pauperism. Their appeals were to our common nature; 
less revolting to an ingenuous mind than to be a suppliant 
to the particular humors or caprice of any fellow-creature, 
or set of fellow-creatures, parochial or societarian. Theirs 

1 10 were the only rates uninvidious in the levy, ungrudged in 
the assessment. 

There was a dignity springing from the very depth of 
their desolation; as to be naked is to be so much nearer 

b to the being a man, than to go in livery. 

15 The greatest spirits have felt this in their reverses; and 
w^ien Dionysius from king turned schoolmaster, do w^e feel 
anything towards him but contempt? Could Vandyke 
have made a picture of him, swaying a ferula for a sceptre, 
which would have affected our minds with the same heroic 

20 pity, the same compassionate admiration, with which we 
regard his Belisarius begging for an oholusf Would the 
moral have been more graceful, more pathetic? 

The Blind feggar in the legend — the father of pretty 

I Bessy^ — ^whose story doggerel rhymes and ale-house signs 

25 cannot so degrade or attenuate, but that some sparks of a 
lustrous spirit will shine through the disguisements — this 
noble earl of Cornwall (as indeed he was) and memorable 
sport of fortune, fleeing from the unjust sentence of his 
liege lord, stript of all, and seated on the flowering green 

80 at Bethnal, with his more fresh and springing daughter by 
his side, illumining his rags and his beggary — would the 

1 Ballad of The Blind Beggar's Daughter of Bednall Green. 



252 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA 

child and parent have cut a better figure, doing the honors 
of a counter or expiating their fallen condition upon the 
three-foot eminence of some sempstering shopboard? 

In tale or history your Beggar is ever the just antipode 
to your King. The poets and romancical writers (as dear 
Margaret Newcastle would call them) when they would 
most sharply and feelingly paint a reverse of fortune, never 
stop till they have brought down their hero in good earnest 
to rags and the wallet. The depth of the descent illustrates 
the height he falls from. There is no medium which can 
be presented to the imagination without offence. There is 
no breaking the fall. Lear, thrown from his palace, must 
divest him of his garments, till he answer *'mere nature"; 
and Cresseid, fallen from a prince's love, must extend her 
pale arms, pale with other whiteness than of beauty, suppli- 
cating lazar alms with bell and clap-dish. 

The Lucia^ wits knew this very well; and, with a con- 
verse policy, when they would express scorn of greatness 
without the pity they show us an Alexander in the shades 
cobbling shoes, or a Semiramis getting up foul linen. 

How would it sound in song, that a great monarch had 
declined his affections upon the daughter of a baker! yet 
do we feel the imagination at all violated when we read the 
''true ballad,"^ where King Cophetua woos the beggar- 
maid ? 

Pauperism, pauper, poor man, are expressions of pity, 
but pity alloyed with contempt. No one properly contemns 
a beggar. Poverty is a comparative thing, and each degree 
of It Is mocked by Its ''neighbor grice."^ Its poor rents 
and comlngs-in^ are soon summed up and told. Its pre- 

1 Ballad of King Cophetua and the Beggar Maid. 

2 Timon of Athens, [IV., iii., 16]. (L.) 

3 Henry V,, IV., i., 260. 



DECAY OF BEGGARS IN THE METROPOLIS 253 

tences to property are almost ludicrous. Its pitiful at- 
tempts to save excite a smile. Every scornful companion 
can weigh his trifle-bigger purse against it. Poor man re- 
proaches poor man in the streets with impolitic mention of 
his condition, his own being a shade better, while the rich 
pass by and jeer at both. No rascally comparative^ insults 
a Beggar, or thinks of weighing purses with him. He is 
not in the scale of comparison. He is not under the meas- 
ure of property. He confessedly hath none, any more than 
a dog or a sheep. No one twitteth him with ostentation 
above his means. No one accuses him of pride, or up- 
braideth him with mock humility. None jostle with him 
for the wall, or pick quarrels for precedency. No wealthy 
neighbor seeketh to eject him from his tenement. No 
man sues him. No man goes to law with him. If I were 
not the independent gentleman that I am, rather than I 
would be a retainer to the great, a led captain, or a poor 
relation, I would choose, out of the delicacy and the great- 
ness of my mind, to be a beggar. 

Rags, which are the reproach of poverty, are the Beggar's 
robes, and graceful insignia of his profession, his tenure, 
his full dress, the suit in which he is expected to show 
himself in public. He is never out of the fashion, or 
limpeth awkwardly behind it. He is not required to put 

j25 on court mourning. He weareth all colors, fearing none. 
His costume hath undergone less change than the Quaker's. 
He is the only man in the universe who is not obliged to 
study appearances. The ups and downs of the world con- 
cern him no longer. He alone continueth in one stay.^ 

JO The price of stock or land affecteth him not. The fluc- 

1 I. Henry IV., III., ii., 67. 

2 Faerie QuEBNB, VII., vii., 47. 



254 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA 

tuations of agricultural or commercial prosperity touch him 
not, or at worst but change his customers. He is not 
expected to become bail or surety for any one. No man 
troubleth him with questioning his religion or politics. He 
is the only free man in the universe. 

The Mendicants of this great city were so many of her 
sights, her lions. I can no more spare them than I could 
the Cries of London. No corner of a street is complete 
without them. They are as indispensable as the Ballad 
Singer; and in their picturesque attire as ornamental as 
the Signs of Old London. They were the standing morals, 
emblems, mementoes, dial-mottoes, the spital sermons, the 
books for children, the salutary checks and pauses to the 
high and rushing tide of greasy citizenry — 

Look 



Upon that poor and broken bankrupt there. ^ 

Above all, those old blind Tobits that used to line the wall 
of Lincoln's Inn Garden, before modern fastidiousness had 
expelled them, casting up their ruined orbs to catch a ray 
of pity, and (if possible) of light, with their faithful dog- 20 
guide at their feet, — whither are they fled? or into what 
corners, blind as themselves, have they been driven, out of 
the wholesome air and sunwarmth? immured between four 
walls, in what withering poor-house do they endure the 
penalty of double darkness, where the chink of the dropt 25 
halfpenny no more consoles their forlorn bereavement, far 
from the sound of the cheerful and hope-stirring tread of 
the passenger? Where hang their useless staves? and who 

will farm their dogs? — Have the overseers of St. L 

caused them to be shot? or were they tied up in sacks, and 30 

1 As You Like It, II., i., 56-7. 



DECAY OF BEGGARS IN THE METROPOLIS 2^0 

dropt into the Thames, at the suggestion of B , the mild 

Rector of — — ? 

Well fare the soul of unfastidious Vincent Bourne, most 
classical, and at the same time, most English, of the 

5 Latinists! — who has treated of this human and quad- 
rupedal alliance, this dog and the man friendship, in the 
sweetest of his poems, the Epitaphium in Canem, or. Dog's 
Epitaph. Reader, peruse it; and say, if customary sights, 
which could call up such gentle poetry as this, were of a 

10 nature to do more harm or good to the moral sense of the 
passengers through the daily thoroughfares of a vast and 
busy metropolis. I 

Pauperis hie Iri requiesco Lyciscus, herilis, 
Dum vixi, tutela vigil columenque senectae, 

15 Dux caeco fidus: nee, me ducente, solebat, 

Prsetenso hinc atque hine baeulo, per iniqua locorum 
Ineertam explorare viam; sed fila secutus, 
Quse dubios regerent passus, vestigia tuta 
Fixit inoffenso gressu; gelidumque sedile 

20 In nudo naetus saxo, qu^ praetereuntium 

Unda frequens eonfiuxit, ibi miserisque tenebras 
Lamentis, noetemque oeulis ploravit obortam. 
Ploravit nee frustra; obolum dedit alter et alter, 
Queis eorda et mentem indiderat natura benignam. 

25 Ad latus interea jacui sopitus herile, 

Vel mediis vigil in somnis; ad herilia jussa 
Auresque atque animum arrectus, seu frustula amice 
Porrexit sociasque dapes, seu longa diei 
Tsedia perpessus, reditum sub noete parabat. 

i3© Hi mores, haee vita fuit, dum fata sinebant, 

Dum neque languebam morbis, nee inerte senecta; 
Quse tandem obrepsit, veterique satelite eseeum 
Orbavit dominum: prisci sed gratia facti 
Ne tota intereat, longos deleta per annos, 

iss Exiguum hunc Irus tumulum de eespite feeit, 



256 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA 

Etsi inopis, non ingratse, munuscula dextrse; 
Carmine signavitque brevi, dominumque canemque 
Quod memoret, fidumque canem dominumque benignum. 

Poor Irus' faithful wolf-dog here I lie, 

That wont to tend my old blind master's steps, 

His guide and guard; nor, while my service lasted, 

Had he occasion for that staff, with which 

He now goes picking out his path in fear 

Over the highways and crossings, but would plant 

Safe in the conduct of my friendly string, lo 

A firm foot forward still, till he had reach 'd 

His poor seat on some stone, nigh where the tide 

Of passers-by in thickest confluence flow'd: 

To whom with loud and passionate laments 

From morn to eve his dark estate he wail'd. , 15 

Nor waird to all in vain : some here and there. 

The well-disposed and good, their pennies gave, 

I meantime at his feet obsequious slept; 

Not all-asleep in sleep, but heart and ear 

Prick'd up at his least motion, to receive 20! 

At his kind hand my customary crums,. 

And common portion in his feast of scraps; 

Or when night warn'd us homeward, tired and spent j 

With our long day, and tedious beggary. 

These were my manners, this my way of life, 25 i 

Till age and slow disease me overtook, 
And sever'd from my sightless master's side. 
But lest the grace of so good deeds should die, 
Through tract of years in mute oblivion lost. 
This slender tomb of turf hath Irus rear'd, 30 

Cheap monument of no ungrudging hand, 
And with short verse inscribed it, to attest, 
In long and lasting union to attest, 
The virtues of the Beggar and his Dog. 

These dim eyes have in vain explored for some months 35 
past a well-known figure, or part of the figure, of a man, 
who used to glide his comely upper half over the pavements 



DECAY OF BEGGARS IN THE METROPOLIS 257 

of London, wheeling along with most ingenious celerity 
upon a machine of wood; a spectacle to natives, to foreign- 
ers, and to children. He was of a robust make, with a 
florid sailor-like complexion, and his head was bare to the 

5 storm and sunshine. He was a natural curiosity, a 
speculation to the scientific, a prodigy to the simple. The 
infant would stare at the mighty man brought down to his 
own level. The common cripple would despise his own 
pusillanimity, viewing the hale stoutness, and hearty heart, 

10 of this half -limbed giant. Few but must have noticed him; 
for the accident, which brought him low, took place during 
the riots of 1780, and he had been a groundling so long. 
He seemed earth-born, an Ant;«us, and to suck in fresh 
vigor from the soil which he neighbored. He was a grand 

15 fragment; as good as an Elgin marble. The nature which 
should have recruited his reft legs and thighs, was not 
lost, but only retired into his upper parts, and he was half 
a Hercules. I heard a tremendous voice thundering and 
growling, as before an earthquake, and casting down my 

20 eyes, it was this mandrake reviling a steed that had started 
at his portentous appearance. He seemed to want but his 
just stature to hg.ve rent the offending quadruped in shivers. 
He was as the man-part of a Centaur, from which the horse- 
half had been cloven in some dire Lapithan controversy. 

25 He moved on as if he could have made shift with yet half 
of the body-portion which was left him. The os sublime 
was not wanting; and he threw out yet a jolly countenance 
upon the heavens. Forty-and-two years had he driven this 
out-of-door trade, and now that his hair is grizzled in the 

so service, but his good spirits no way impaired, because he 
is not content to exchange his free air and exercise for the 
restraints of a poor-house, he is expiating his contumacy in 



258 THE ESSAY'S OF ELIA 

one of those houses (ironically christened) of Correction. 

Was a daily spectacle like this to be deemed a nuisance, 
which called for legal interference to remove? or not rather 
a salutary and a touching object, to the passers-by in a 
great city? Among her shows, her museums, and supplies ^ 
for ever-gaping curiosity (and what else but an accumula- 
tion of sights — endless sights— i5 a great city; or for what 
else is it desirable?) was there not room for one Lusus (not 
Natur(P, indeed, but) Accidentiumf What if in forty-and- 
two years' going about, the man had scraped together lo 
enough to give a portion to his child (as the rumor ran) of a 
few hundreds — ^whom had he injured? — whom had he im- 
posed upon? The contributors had enjoyed their sight for 
their pennies. What if after being exposed all day to the 
heats, the rains, and the frosts of heaven — shuffling his is 
ungainly trunk along in an elaborate and painful motion — 
he was enabled to retire at night to enjoy himself at a club 
of his fellow-cripples over a dish of hot meat and vegetables, 
as the charge was gravely brought against him by a clergy- 
man deposing before a House of Commons' Committee — 20 
was this, or was his truly paternal consideration, which (if a 
fact) deserved a statue rather than a whipping-post, and is 
inconsistent at least with the exaggeration of nocturnal 
orgies which he has been slandered with — ^a reason that he 
should be deprived of his chosen, harmless, nay edifying, 25 
way of life, and be committed in hoary age for a sturdy 
vagabond ?— 

There w^as a Yorick once, whom it would not have 
shamed to have sate down at the cripples' feast, and to have 
thrown in his benediction, ay, and his mite too, for a com- so 
panionable symbol. *'Age, thou hast lost thy breed!" — ^ 

1 Julius Caesar, I., ii., 151. 



DECAY OF BEGGARS IN THE METROPOLIS 259 

Half of these stories about the prodigious fortunes made 
by begging are (I verily believe) misers' calumnies. One 
was much talked of in the public papers some time since, 
and the usual charitable inferences deduced. A clerk in 

5 the Bank was surprised with the announcement of a five 
hundred pound legacy left him by a person whose name he 
was a stranger to. It seems that in his daily morning walks 
from Peckham (or some village thereabouts) where he lived, 
to his office, it had been his practice for the last twenty 

10 years to drop his halfpenny duly into the hat of some blind 
Bartimeus, that sate begging alms by the wayside in the 
Borough. The good old beggar recognised his daily bene- 

/ factor by the voice only; and, when he^died, left all the 
amassings of his alms (that had been half a century per- 

15 haps in the' accumulating) to his old Bank friend. Was 
this a story to purse up people's hearts, and pennies, against 
giving an alms to the blind? — or not rather a beautiful 
moral of well-directed charity on the one part, and noble 
gratitude upon the other? . 

20 I sometimes wish I had been that Bank clerk. 

I seem to remember a poor old grateful kind of creature, 
blinking, and looking up with his no eyes in the sun — 
Is it possible I could have steeled my purse against him? 
Perhaps I had no small change. 

25 Reader, do not be frightened at the hard words, imposi- 
tion, imposture — give, and ask no questions. Cast thy bread 
upon the waters.^ Some have unawares (like this Bank 
clerk) entertained angels.^ 

Shut not thy purse-strings always against painted dis- 

30 tress. Act a charity sometimes. When a poor creature 

1 EccLESiASTns, xi., i. 

2 Hebrews, xiii., 2. 



260 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA 

(outwardly and visibly such) comes before thee, do not stay 
to inquire whether the "seven small children," in whose 
name he implores thy assistance, have a veritable existence. 
Rake not into the bowels of unwelcome truth, to save a 
halfpenny. It is good to believe him. If he be not all that a 
he pretendeth, give, and under a personate father of a 
family, think (if thou pleaseth) that thou hast relieved an 
indigent bachelor. When they come with their counterfeit 
looks, and mumping tones, think them players. You pay 
your money to see a comedian feign these things, which, lo 
concerning these poor people, thou canst not certainly tell 
whether they are feigned or not.* 

["Pray God, your honor, relieve me," said a poor beads- 
woman to my friend L one day: "I have seen better 

days." "So have I, my good woman," retorted he, looking is 
up at the welkin, which was just then threatening a storm — 
and the jest (he will have) was as good to the beggar as a 
tester. It was, at all events, kinder than consigning her to 
the stocks, or the parish beadle. — 

But L. has a way of viewing things in rather a paradox- 20 
ical light on some occasions. 

P. S. — My friend Hume (not M. P.) has a curious manu- 
script in his possession, the original draft of the celebrated 
"Beggar's Petition" (who cannot say by heart the "Beg- 
gar's Petition" ?), as it was written by some school usher (as 25 
I remember), with corrections interlined from the pen of 
Oliver Goldsmith. As a specimen of the Doctor's im- 
provement, I recollect one most judicious alteration — 

A pamper'd menial drove me from the door. 

It stood originally — ^^ 

*What follows was omitted from the collected edition. 



A DISSERTATION UPON ROAST PIG 261 

A livery servant drove me, etc. 

Here Is an instance of poetical or artificial language 
properly substituted for the phrase of common conversa- 
tion; against Wordsworth. I think I must get H. to send 
5 it to the London, as a corollary to the foregoing.] 

A DISSERTATION UPON ROAST PIG. 

Mankind, says a Chinese manuscript, which my friend M. 
was obliging enough to read and explain to me, for the first 
seventy thousand ages ate their meat raw, clawing or biting 
it from the living animal, just as they do in Abyssinia to 

10 this day. This period is not obscurely hinted at by their 
great Confucius in the second chapter of his Mundane 
Mutations, where he designates a kind of golden age by 
the term Cho-fang, literally the Cook's holiday. The 
manuscript goes on to say, that the art of roasting, or rather 

15 broiling (which I take to be the elder brother) was acci- 
dentally discovered in the manner following. The swine- 
herd, Ho-ti, having gone out into the woods one morning, 
as his manner was, to collect mast for his hogs, left his 
cottage in the care of his eldest son Bo-bo, a great lubberly 

20 boy, who being fond of playing with fire, as younkers of his 
age commonly are, let some sparks escape into a' bundle 
of straw, which kindling quickly, spread the conflagration 
over every part of their poor mansion, till it was reduced to 
ashes. Together with the cottage (a sorry antediluvian 

25 make-shift of a building, you may think it), what was of 
much more importance, a fine litter of new-farrowed pigs, 
no less than nine in number, perished. China pigs have 
been esteemed a luxury all over the East from the remotest 
periods that we read of. Bo-bo was in the utmost con- 



262 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA 

sternation, as you may think, not so much for the sake of the 
tenement, which his father and he could easily build up 
again with a few dry branches, and the labor of an hour or 
two, at any time, as for the loss of the pigs. While he was 
thinking what he should say to his father, and wringing his s 
hands over the smoking remnants of one of those untimely 
sufferers, an odor assailed his nostrils, unlike any scent 
which he had before experienced. What could it proceed 
from? — not from the burnt cottage — ^he had smelt that smell 
before — indeed this was by no means the first accident of lo 
the kind which had occurred through the negligence of this 
unlucky young firebrand. Much less did it resemble that 
of any known herb, weed, or flower. A premonitory 
moistening at the same time overflowed his nether lip. He 
knew not what to think. He next stooped down to feel 15 
the pig, if there were any signs of life in it. He burnt his 
fingers, and to cool them he applied them in his booby 
fashion to his mouth. Some of the crumbs of the scorched 
skin had come away with his fingers, and for the first time 
in his life (in the world's life indeed, for before him no man 20 
had known it) he tasted — crackling! Again he felt and 
fumbled at the pig. It did not burn him so much now, still 
he licked his fingers from a sort of habit. The truth at 
length broke into his slow understanding, that it was the 
pig that smelt so, and the pig that tasted so delicious; and, 25 
surrendering himself up to the new-born pleasure, he fell 
to tearing up whole handfuls of the scorched skin with the 
flesh next it, and was cramming it down his throat in his 
beastly fashion, when his sire entered amid the smoking 
rafters, armed with retributory cudgel, and finding how so 
affairs stood, began to rain blows upon the young rogue's 
shoulders, as thick as hail-stones, which Bo-bo heeded not 



A DISSERTATION UPON ROAST PIG 263 

any more than if they had been flies. The tickling pleas- 
ure, which he experienced in his lower regions, had ren- 
dered him quite callous to any inconveniences he might 
feel in those remote quarters. His father might lay on, 

5 but he could not beat him from his pig, till he had fairly 
made an end of it, when, becoming a little more sensible of 
his situation, something like the following dialogue ensued: 
"You graceless whelp, what have you got there devour- 
ing? Is it not enough that you have burnt me down three 

10 houses with your dog's tricks, and be hanged to you, but 
you must be eating fire, and I know not what — what have 
you got there, I say?'* 

"O father, the pig, the pig, do come and taste how nice 
the burnt pig eats." 

\5 The ears of Ho-ti tingled with horror. He cursed his 
son, and he cursed himself that ever he should beget a son 
that should eat burnt pig. 

Bo-bo, whose scent was wonderfully sharpened since 
morning, soon raked out another pig, and fairly rending it 

20 asunder, thrust the lesser half by main force into the fists of 

Ho-ti, still shouting out, "Eat, eat, eat the burnt pig, 

father, only taste, — O Lord," — with such-like barbarous 

ejaculations, cramming all the while as if he would choke. 

Ho-ti trembled in every joint while he grasped the abom- 

25 inable thing, wavering whether he should not put his son to 
death for an unnatural young monster, when the crackling 
scorching his fingers, as it had done his son's, and applying 
the same remedy to them, he in his turn tasted some of 
its flavor, which, make what sour mouths he would for 

30 a pretence, proved not altogether displeasing to him. In 
conclusion (for the manuscript here is a little tedious) both 
father and son fairly sat down to the mess, and never 



264 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA 

left off till they had despatched all that remained of the 
litter. 

Bo-bo was strictly enjoined not to let the secret escape, 
for the neighbors would certainly have stoned them for a 
couple of abominable wretches, who could think of improv- 
ing upon the good meat which God had sent them. Never- 
theless, strange stories got about. It was observed that 
Ho-ti's cottage was burnt down now more frequently than 
ever. Nothing but fires from this time forward. Some 
Would break out in broad day, others in the night-time. 
As often as the sow farrowed, so sure was .ne house of 
Ho-ti to be in a blaze; and Ho-ti himself, which was the 
more remarkable, instead of chastising his son, seemed to 
grow more indulgent to him than ever. At length they were 
watched, the terrible mystery discovered, and father and 15 
son summoned to take their trial at Pekin, then an incon- 
siderable assize town. Evidence was given, the obnoxious 
food itself produced in court, and verdict about to be pro- 
nounced, when the foreman of the jury begged that some of 
the burnt pig, of which the culprits stood accused, might be 20 
handed into the box. He handled it, and they all handled 
it, and burnt their fingers, as Bo-bo and his father had done 
before them, and nature prompting to each of them the 
same remedy, against the face of all the facts, and the clear- 
est charge which judge had ever given, — to the surprise of 25 
the whole court, townsfolk, strangers, reporters, and all 
present — ^^vithout leaving the box, or any manner of con- 
sultation whatever, they brought in a simultaneous verdict 
of Not Guilty. 

The judge, who was a shrewd fellow, winked at the mani- 30 
fest iniquity of the decision; and, when the court was dis- 
missed, went privily, and bought up all the pigs that could 



A DISSERTATION UPON ROAST PIG 265 

be had for love or money. In a few days his Lordship's 
town house was observed to be on fire. The thing took 
wing, and now there was nothing to be seen but fires in 
every direction. Fuel and pigs grew enormously dear all 

5 over the districts. The insurance offices one and all shut 
up shop. People built slighter and slighter every day, until 
it was feared that the very science of architecture would in 
no long time be lost to the world. Thus this custom of 
firing houses continued, till in process of time, says my 

10 manuscript, a sage arose, like our Locke, who made a dis- 
covery, that the flesh of swine, or indeed of any other 
animal, might be cooked {burnt, as they called it) without 
the necessity of consuming a whole house to dress it. Then 
first began the rude form of a gridiron. Roasting by the 

15 string, or spit, came in a century or two later, I forget in 
whose dynasty. By such slow degrees, concludes the 
manuscript, do the most useful, and seemingly the most 

obvious arts, make their way among mankind. 

Without placing too implicit faith in the account above 

20 given, it must be agreed, that if a worthy pretext for so 
dangerous an experiment as setting houses on fire (espe- 
cially in these days) could be assigned in favor of any 
culinary object, that pretext and excuse might be found in 

ROAST PIG. 

25 Of all the delicacies in the whole mundus edihilis, 
I will maintain it to be the most delicate — princeps 
ohsoniorum. 

I speak not of your grown porkers — things between pig 
and pork — those hobbledehoys — but a young and tender 

30 suckling — under a moon old — guiltless as yet of the sty — 
with no original speck of the amor immunditice, the heredi- 
tary failing of the first parent, yet manifest— his voice as yet 



266 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA 

not broken, but something between a childish treble, and 
a grumble — the mild forerunner, or prwludium, of a grunt. 
He must be roasted. I am not ignorant that our ances- 
tors ate them seethed, or boiled — but what a sacrifice of the 
exterior tegument! s 

There is no flavor comparable, I will contend, to that of 
the crisp, tawny, w^ell-watched, not over-roasted, crackling, 
as it is well called — the very teeth are invited to their share 
of the pleasure at this banquet in overcoming the coy, 
brittle resistance — with the adhesive oleaginous^O call it lo 
not fat — but an indefinable sweetness growing up to it — the 
tender blossoming of fat — fat cropped in the bud — taken in 
the shoot — in the first innocence — the cream and quintes- 
sence of the child-pig's yet pure food — the lean, no lean,l3ut 
a kind of animal manna, — or, rather, fat and lean (if it is 
must be so) so blended and running into each other, that 
both together make but one ambrosian result, or common 
substance. 

Behold him, while he is "doing" — it seemeth rather a 
refreshing warmth, than a scorching heat, that he is so 20 
passive to. How equably he twirleth round the string! — 
Now he is just done. To see the extreme sensibility of 
that tender age, he hath wept out his pretty eyes — radiant 
jellies — shooting stars- 
See him in the dish, his second cradle, how meek he 25 
lieth! — ^wouldst thou have had this innocent grow up to 
the grossness and indocility which too often accompany 
maturer swinehood? Ten to one he would have proved 
a glutton, a sloven, an obstinate, disagreeable animal — 
wallowing in all manner of filthy conversation^ — ^from these 80 
sins he is happily snatched away — 

1 II. Peter, ii., 7. 



A DISSERTATION UPON ROAST PIG 267 

Ere sin could blight, or sorrow fade, 
Death came with timely care — ^ 

his memory is odoriferous — no clowa curseth, while his 

stomach half rejecteth, the rank bacon — no coalheaver 
5 bolteth him in reeking sausages — he hath a fair sepulchre 

in the grateful stomach of the judicious epicure — ^and for 

such a tomb might be content to die. 

He is the best of Sapors. Pine-apple is great. She is 

indeed almost too transcendent— a delight, if not sinful, yet 
10 so like to sinning, that really a tender-conscienced person 

would do well to pause — too ravishing for mortal taste, she 

woundeth and excoriateth the lips that approach her — like 

lovers' kisses, she biteth — she is a pleasure bordering on 

pain from the fierceness and insanity of her relish — but she 
15 stoppeth at the palate — she meddleth not with the appetite 

— and the coarsest hunger might barter her consistently 

for a mutton chop. 

Pig — let me speak his praise — is no less provocative of 

the appetite, than he is satisfactory to the criticalness of the 
20 censorious palate. The strong man may batten on him, 

and the weakling refuseth not his mild juices. 

Unlike to mankind's mixed characters, a bundle of 

virtues and vices, inexplicably intertwisted, and not to be 

unravelled without hazard, he is — good throughout. No 
25 part of him is better or worse than another. He helpeth, 

as far as his little means extend, all around. He is the 

least envious of banquets. He is all neighbors' fare. 
I am one of those, who freely and ungrudgingly impart a 

share of the good things of this life which fall to their lot 
30 (few as mine are in this kind) to a friend. I protest I take 

as great an interest in my friend's pleasures, his relishes, 

1 Coleridge, Epitaph on an Infant. • 




_268 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA 

and proper satisfactions, as in mine own. "Presents,"^^ 
often say, ''endear Absents." Hares, pheasants, part- 
ridges, snipes, barn-door chickens (those "tame villatic 
fowl")S capons, plovers, brawn, barrels of oysters, I dis- 
pense as freely as I receive them. I love to taste them, 
as it were, upon the tongue of my friend. But a stop 
must be put somewhere. One would not, like Lear, 
''give everything." I make my stand upon pig. Methinks 
it is an ingratitude to the Giver of all good favors, to extra- 
domiciliate, or send out of the house, slightingly (under 
pretext of friendship, or I know not what), a blessing so 
particularly adapted, predestined, I may say, to my indi- 
vidual palate — It argues an insensibility. 

I remember a touch of conscience in this kind at school. 
My good old aunt, who never parted from me at the end of is 
a holiday without stuffing a sweetmeat, or some nice thing 
into my pocket, had dismissed me one evening with a 
smoking plum-cake, fresh from the oven. In my way to 
school (it was over London Bridge) a grey headed old 
beggar saluted me (I have no doubt at this time of day that 20 
he was a counterfeit). I had no pence to console him 
with, and in the vanity of self-denial, and the very cox- 
combry of charity, school-boy like, I made him a present of 
—the whole cake ! I walked on a little, buoyed up, as one 
is on such occasions, with a sweet soothing of self-satisfac- 25 
tion ; but before I had got to the end of the bridge, my better 
feelings returned, and I burst into tears, thinking how un- 
grateful I had been to my good aunt, to go and give her 
good gift away to a stranger, that I had never seen before, 
and who might be a bad man for aught I knew; and then 30 
I thought of the pleasure my aunt would be taking in 

1 Samson Agonistes, 1695. 



10 i 



A DISSERTATION UPON ROAST PIG 269 

thinking that I — I myself, and not another — would eat her 
nice cake — and what should I say to her the next time I 
saw her — ^how naughty I was to part with her pretty present 
■ — and the odor of that spicy cake came back upon my 

5 recollection, and the pleasure and the curiosity I had taken 
in seeing her make it, and her joy when she sent it to the 
oven, and how disappointed she would feel that I had 
never had a bit of it in my mouth at last — and I blamed 
my impertinent spirt of alms-giving, and out-of-place 

10 hypocrisy of goodness, and above all I wished never to see 
the fac^ again of that insidious, good-for-nothing, old grey 
imposter. 

Our ancestors were nice in their method of' sacrificing 
these tender victims. We read of pigs whipt to death with 

15 something of a shock, as we hear of any other obsolete 
custom. The age of discipline is gone by, or it would be 
curious to inquire (in a philosophical light merely) what 
effect this process might have towards intenerating and 
dulcifying a substance, naturally so mild and dulcet as the 

20 flesh of young pigs. It looks like refining a violet. Yet 
we should be cautious, while we condemn the inhumanity, 
how we censure the wisdom of the practice. It might 
impart a gusto — • 

I remember an hypothesis, argued upon by the young 

25 students, when I was at St. Omer's, and maintained with 
much learning and pleasantry on both sides, ''Whether, 
supposing that the flavor of a pig who obtained his death 
by whipping {per fiagellationem extremam) superadded a 
pleasure upon the palate of a man more intense than any 

30 possible suffering we can conceive in the animal, is man 
justified in using that method of putting the animal to 
death?" I forget the decision. 



270 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA 

His sauce should be considered. Decidedly, a few 
bread crumbs, done up with his liver and brains, sind a 
dash of mild sage. But, banish, dear Mrs. Cook, I beseech 
you, the whole onion tribe. Barbecue your whole hogs to 
your palate, steep them in shalots, stuff them out with 5 
plantations of the rank and guilty garlic; you cannot 
poison them, or rnake them stronger than they are — but 
consider, he is a weakling — a flower. 

A BACHELOR'S COMPLAINT 
OF THE BEHAVIOR OF MARRIED PEOPLE. 

As a single man, I have spent a good deal of my time in 
noting down the infirmities of Married People, to console lo 
myself for those superior pleasures, which they tell me I 
have lost by remaining as I am. 

I cannot say that the quarrels of men and their wives 
ever made any great impression upon me, or had much 
tendency to strengthen me in those anti-social resolutions, is 
which I took up long ago upon more substantial considera- 
tions. What oftenest offends me at the houses of married 
persons where I visit, is an error of quite a different descrip- 
tion; — it is that they are too loving. 

Not loo loving neither: that does not explain my mean- 20 
ing. Besides, why should that offencf me? The very act 
of separating themselves from the rest of the world, to have 
the fuller enjoyment of each other's society, implies that 
they prefer one another to all the wp'dd. 

But what I complain of is, that they carry this preference 25 
so undisguisedly, they perk it up in the faces of us single 
people so shamelessly, you cannot be in their company a 
moment without being made to feel, by some indirect hint 



A BACHELOR'S COMPLAINT 271 

or open avowal, that you are not the object of this prefer- 
ence. Now there are some things which give no offence, 
while implied or taken for granted merely; but expressed, 
there is much offence in them. If a man were to accost 

5 the first homely-featured or plain-dressed young woman of 
his acquaintance, and tell her bluntly, that she was not 
handsome or rich enough for him, and he could not marry 
her, he w^ould deserve to be kicked for his ill manners ; yet 
no less is implied in the fact, that having access and oppor- 

10 tunity of putting the question to her, he has never yet 
thought fit to do it. The young woman understands this as 
clearly as if it were put into words; but no reasonable 
young woman would think of making this the ground of a 
quarrel. Just as little right have a married couple to tell 

15 me by speeches, and looks that are scarce less plain than 
speeches, that I am not the happy man, — the lady's choice. 
It is enough that I know I am not; I do not want this 
perpetual reminding. 

The display of superior knowledge or riches may be made 

20 sufficiently mortifying; but these admit of a palliative. 
The knowledge which is brought out to insult me, may 
accidentally improve me; and in the rich man's houses 
and pictures, — ^his parks and gardens, I have a temporary 
usufruct at least. But the display of married happiness has 

25 none of these palliatives; it is throughout pure, unrecom- 
pensed, unqualified insult. 

Marriage by its best title is a monopoly, and not of the 
least invidious sort. It is the cunning of most possessors of 
any exclusive privilege to keep their advantage as much out 

30 of sight as possible, that their less favored neighbors, 
seeing little of the benefit, may the less be disposed to 
question the right. But these married monopolists 



272 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA 

thrust the most obnoxious part of their patent into our 
faces. 

Nothing is to me more distasteful than that entire com- 
placency and satisfaction which beam in the countenances 
of a new-married couple,— in that of the lady particularly: 5 
it tells you, that her lot is disposed of in this world; that you 
can have no hopes of her. It is true, I have none; nor 
wishes either, perhaps: but this is one of those truths which 
ought, as I said before, to be taken for granted, not ex- 
pressed. 

The excessive airs which those people give themselves, 
founded on the ignorance of us unmarried people, would be 
more offensive if they were less irrational. We Avill allow 
them to understand the mysteries belonging to their own 
craft better than we who have not had the happiness to be 15 
made free of the company: but their arrogance is not con- 
tent within these limits. If a single person presume to offer 
his opinion in their presence, though upon the most in- 
different subject, he is immediately silenced as an mcom- 
petent person. Nay, a young married lady of my acquaint- 20 
ance, who, the best of the jest was, had not changed her 
condition above a fortnight before, in a question on which I 
had the misfortune to differ from her, respecting the prop- 
erest mode of breeding oysters for the London market, 
had the assurance to ask, with a sneer, how such an old 25 
Bachelor as I could pretend to know anything about such 
matters. 

But what I have spoken of hitherto is nothing to the airs 
which these creatures give themselves when they come, as 
they generally do, to have children. When I consider how 30 
little of a rarity children are,— that every street and blind ' 
alley swarms with them,— that the poorest people com- 



A BACHELOR'S COMPLAINT 273 

monly have them in most abundance, — that there are few 
marriages that are not blest with at least one of these bar- 
gains, — how often they turn out ill, and defeat the fond hopes 
of their parents, taking to vicious courses, which end in pov- 

5 erty, disgrace, the gallows, etc. — I cannot for my life tell 
what cause for pride there can possibly be in having them. 
If they were young phoenixes, indeed, that were born but 
one in a year, there might be a pretext. But when they are 
so common — 

10 I do not advert to the insolent merit which they assume 
with their husbands on these occasions. Let them look to 
that. But why we, who are not their natural-born sub- 
jects, should be expected to bring our spices, myrrh, and 
incense,^ — our tribute and homage of admiration, — I do 

15 not see. 

*'Like as the arrows in the hand of the giant, even so are 
the young children:" so says the excellent office in our 
Prayer-book appointed for the churching of women. 
*'Happy is the man that hath his quiver full of them:" so 

20 say I; but then don't let him discharge his quiver upon us 
that are weaponless; — let them be arrows, but not to gali 
and stick us. I have generally observed that these arrows 
are double-headed : they have two forks, to be sure to hit 
with one or the other. As for instance, where you come 

25 into a house which is full of children, if you happen to take 
no notice of them (you are thinking of something else, 
perhaps, and turn a deaf ear to their innocent caresses), 
you are set down as untractable, morose, a hater of children. 
On the other hand, if you find them more than usually en- 

30 gaging, — if you are taken with their pretty manners, and 
set about in earnest to romp and play with them, some pre- 

1 Matthew, ii., 11. 



274 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA 



1 



i 



text or other is sure to be found for sending them out of the 

room : they are too noisy or boisterous, or Mr. does 

not Hke children. With one or other of these forks the 
arrow is sure to hit you. 

I could forgive their jealousy, and dispense with toying 
with their brats, if it gives them pain ; but I think -it un- 
reasonable to be called upon to love them, where I see 
no occasion, — to love a whole family, perhaps, eight, nine, 
or ten, indiscriminately, — to love all the pretty dears, 
because children are so engaging. lo 

I know there is a proverb, "Love me, love my dog;" 
that is not always so very practicable, particularly if the dog 
be set upon you to tease you or snap at you in sport. But 
a dog, or a lesser thing, — any inanimate substance, as a 
keepsake, a watch or a ring, a tree, or the place where we is 
last parted when my friend went away upon a long absence, 
I can make shift to love, because I love him, and any- 
thing that reminds me of him; provided it be in its nature 
indifferent, and apt to receive whatever hue fancy can give 
it. But children have a real character and essential being 20 
of themselves : they are amiable or unamiable per se; I must 
love or hate them as I see cause for either in their qualities. 
A child's nature is too serious a thing to admit of its being 
regarded as a mere appendage to another being, and to be 
loved or hated accordingly: they stand with me upon their 25 
own stock, as much as men and women do. O ! but you 
will say, sure it is an attractive age, — there is something 
in the tender years of infancy that of itself charms us. 
That is the very reason why I am more nice about them. 
I know that a sweet child is the sweetest thing in nature, 30 
not even excepting the delicate creatures which bear them ; 
but the prettier the kind of a thing is, the more desirable it 



A BACHELOR'S COMPLAINT 275 

is that it should be pretty of its kind. One daisy differs 
not much from another in glory ;^ but a violet should look 
and smell the daintiest. — I was always rather squeamish in 
my women and children. 

5 But this is not the worst: one must be admitted into 
their familiarity, at least, before they can complain of 
inattention. It implies visits, and some kind of inter- 
course. But if the husband be a man with whom you have 
lived on a friendly footing before marriage, — if you did not 

''10 come in on the wife's side, — if you did not sneak into the 
house in her train, but were an old friend in fast habits of 
intimacy before their courtship w^as so much as thought on, 
— look about you — ^your tenure is precarious — before a 
twelvemonth shall roll over your head, you shall find your 

15 old friend gradually grow cool and altered towards you, 
and at last seek opportunities of breaking with you. I have 

P scarce a married friend of my acquaintance, upon whose 
firm faith I can rely, whose friendship did not commence 
after the 'period of his marriage. With some limitations 

20 they can endure that: but that the good man should have 

dared to enter into a solemn league of friendship in which 

they were not consulted, though it happened before they 

V knew him, — before they that are now man and wife ever 

met, — this is intolerable to them. Every long friendship, 

25 every old authentic intimacy, must be brought into their 
office to be new stamped with their currency, as a sovereign 
Prince calls in the good old money that was coined in some 
reign before he was born or thought of, to be new marked 
and minted with the stamp of his authority, before he will 

30 let it pass current in the world. You may guess what luck 

1 T. Corinthians, xv., 41, adapted. 



276 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA 

generally befalls such a rusty piece of metal as I am in these 
new minting s. 

Innumerable are the ways which they take to insult and 
worm you out of their husband's confidence. Laughing at 
all you say with a kind of wonder, as if you were a queer 
kind of fellow that said good things, but an oddity, is one 
of the ways; — they have a particular kind of stare for the 
purpose; — till at last the husband, who used to defer to 
your judgment, and would pass over some excrescences of 
understanding and manner for the sake of a general vein n, 
of observation (not quite vulgar) which he perceived in you, 
begins to suspect whether you are not altogether a humorist, 
• — a fellow well enough to have consorted with in his bache- 
lor days, but not quite so proper to be introduced to ladies. 
This may be called the staring way ; and is that which has i; 
oftenest been put in practice against me. 

Then there is the exaggerating way, or the way of irony ; 
that is, where they find you an object of especial regard 
with their husband, who is not so easily to be shaken from 
the lasting attachment founded on esteem which he has 2c 
conceived towards you ; by never-qualified exaggerations to 
cry up all that you say or do, till the good man, who under- 
stands well enough that it is all done in compliment to him, 
grows weary of the debt of gratitude which is due to so 
much candor, and by relaxing a little on his part, and 2.^ 
taking down a peg or two in his enthusiasm, sinks at length 
to that kindly level of moderate esteem,— that "decent 
affection and complacent kindness"^ towards you where 
she herself can join in sympathy with him without much 
stretch and violence to her sincerity. 3c 

Another way (for the ways they have to accomplish so 

1 Home, Douglas, I., i. ' 



A BACHELOR'S COMPLAINT 277 

desirable a purpose are infinite) is, with a kind of innocent 
simplicity, continually to mistake what it was which first 
made their husband fond of you. If an esteem for some- 
thing excellent in your moral character was that which 

5 riveted the chain which she is to break, upon any imaginary 
discovery of a want of poignancy in your conversation, she 
will cry, "I thought, my dear, you described your friend, 

Mr. , as a great wit." If, on the other hand, it was for 

some supposed charm in your conversation that he first 

10 grew to like you, and was content for this to overlook some 
trifling irregularities in your moral deportment, upon the 
first notice of any of these she as readily exclaims, "This, 

my dear, is your good Mr. ." One good lady whom I 

took the liberty of expostulating with for not showing me 

15 quite so much respect as I thought due to her husband's old 
friend, had the candor to confess to me that she had often 
heard Mr. — — speak of me before marriage, and that she 
had conceived a great desire to be acquainted with me, but 
that the sight of me had very much disappointed her expec- 

20 tations; for from her husband's representations of me, she 
had formed a notion that she was to see a fine, tall, oflficer- 
like looking man (I use her very words) ; the very reverse of 
which proved to be the truth. This was candid ; and I had 
the civility not to ask her in return, how she came to pitch 

25 upon a " standard of personal accomplishments for her 
husband's friends which differed so much from his own; 
for my friend's dimensions as near as possibly approximate 
to mine; he standing five feet five in his shoes, in which I 
have the advantage of him by about half an inch; and he 

30 no more than myself exhibiting any indications of a martial 
character in his air or countenance. 

These are some of the mortifications which I have en- 



278 . THE ESSAYS OF ELIA 

countered in the absurd attempt to visit at their houses. 
To enumerate them all would be a vain endeavor: I shall 
therefore just glance at the very common impropriety of 
which married ladies are guilty, — of treating us as if wegB|j 
were their husbands, and mce versa. I mean, when they 5 
use us with familiarity, and their husbands with ceremony. 
Testacea, for instance, kept me the other night two or three 
hours beyond my usual time of supping, while she was 

fretting because Mr. did not come home till the 

oysters were all spoiled, rather than she would be guilty of 10 
the impoliteness of touching one in his absence. This was 
reversing the point of good manners: for ceremony is an 
invention to take off the uneasy feeling which we derive 
from knowing ourselves to be less the object of love and 
esteem with a fellow-creature than some other person is. It 15 
endeavors to make up, by superior attentions in little 
points, for that invidious preference which it is forced to 
deny in the greater. Had Testacea kept the oysters back 
for me, and withstood her husband's importunities to go to 
supper, she would have acted according to the strict rules 20 
of propriety. I know no ceremony that ladies are bound to 
observe to their husbands, beyond the point of a modest 
behavior and decorum: therefore I must protest against 
the vicarious gluttony of Cerasia, who at her own table sent 
away a dish of Morellas, which I was applying to with great 25 
good-will, to her husband at the other end of the table, and 
recommended a plate of less extraordinary gooseberries to 
my unwedded palate in their stead. Neither can I excuse 

the wanton affront of . 

But I am weary of stringing up all my married acquaint- 30 
ance by Roman denominations. Let them amend and 
change their manners, or I promise to record the full- 



10 



ON THE ACTING OF MUNDEN . 279 

length English of their names to the terror of all such 
desperate offenders in future. 

ON THE ACTING OF MUNDEN. 

Not many nights ago I had come home from seeing this 
extraordinary performer in Cockletop; and when I retired 
to my pillow, his whimsical image still stuck by me, in a 
manner as to threaten sleep. In vain I tried to divest 
myself of it, by conjuring up the most opposite associations. 
I resolved to be serious. I raised up the gravest topics of 
life; private misery, public calamity. All would not do. 

There the antic sate 

Mocking our state — ^ 

his queer visnomy — ^his bewildering costume — all the 
strange things which he had raked together — his serpentine 
rod,swagging about in his pocket — Cleopatra's tear, and the 

15 rest of his relics — O'Keefe's wild farce, and his wilder com- 
mentary — till the passion of laughter, like grief in excess, 
relieved itself by its own weight, inviting the sleep which in 
the first instance it had driven away. 

But I was not to escape so easily. No sooner did I fall 

20 into slumbers, than the same image, only more perplexing, 
assailed me in the shape of dreams. Not one Munden, but 
five hundred, were dancing before me, like the faces which, 
whether you will or no, come when you have been taking 
opium — all the strange combinations, which this strangest 

25 of all strange mortals ever shot his proper countenance intr, 
from the day he came commissioned to dry up the tears of 
the town for the loss of the now almost forgotten Edwin. 
O for the power of the pencil to have fixed them when I 
awoke! A season or two since there was exhibited a 

1 Richard II., III., ii., 162. 



280 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA 

Hogarth gallery. I do not see why there should not be a 
Munden gallery. In richness and variety the latter would 
not fall far short of the former. 

There is one face of Farley, one face of Knight, one (but 
what a one it is!) of Liston; but Munden has none that 5 
you can properly pin down, and call his. When you think 
he has exhausted his battery of looks, in unaccountable 
warfare with your gravity, suddenly he sprouts out an 
entirely new set of features, like Hydra. He is not one, 
but legion. Not so much a comedian, as a company. If 10 
his name could be multiplied like his countenance, it might 
fill a play-bill. He, and he alone, literally makes faces; 
applied to any other person, the phrase is a mere figure, 
denoting certain modifications of the human countenance. 
Out of some invisible wardrobe he dips for faces, as his 15 
friend Suett used for wigs, and fetches them out as easily. 
I should not be surprised to see him some day put out the 
head of a river-horse; or come forth a pewitt, or lapwing, 
some feathered metamorphosis. 

I have seen this gifted actor in Sir Christopher Curry — 20 
in Old Dornton — diffuse a glow of sentiment which has 
made the pulse of a crowded theatre beat like that of one 
man ; when he has come in aid of the pulpit, doing good to 
the moral heart of the people. I have seen some faint ap- 
proaches to this sort of excellence in other players. But 25 
in the grand grotesque of farce, Munden stands out as 
single and unaccompanied as Hogarth. Hogarth, strange 
to tell, had no followers. The school of Munden began, 
and must end with himself. 

Can any man wonder, like him? can any man see ghosts, ^c 
like him? or fight ipith his own shadow^ — "sessa" — as 

1 King Lear, III., iv., 58. 



MODERN GALLANTRY 281 

he does in that strangely-neglected thing, the Cobbler of 
Preston — where his alterations from the Cobbler to the 
Magnifico, and from the Magnifico to the Cobbler, keep 
the brain of the spectator in as wild a ferment, as if some 
Arabian Night were being acted before him. Who like 
him can throw, or ever attempted to throw, a preternatural 
interest over the commonest daily-life objects? A table, or 
a joint stool, in his conception, rises into a dignity equiva- 
lent to Cassiopeia's chair. It is invested with constellatory 

importance. You could not speak of it with more defer- 
ence, if it were mounted into the firmament. A beggar in 
the hands of Michael Angelo, says Fuseli, rose the Patriarch 
of Poverty. So the gusto of Munden antiquates and en- 
nobles what it touches. His pots and his ladles are as grand 

5 and primal as the seething-pots^ and hooks^ seen in old 
prophetic vision. A tub of butter, contemplated by him, 
amounts to a Platonic idea. He understands a leg of 
mutton in its quiddity. He stands wondering, amid the 
commonplace materials of life, like primeval man with the 

sun and stars about him. 

MODERN GALLANTRY. 

In comparing modern with ancient manners, we are pleased 
to compliment ourselves upon the point of gallantry; a 
certain obsequiousness, or deferential respect, which we are 
supposed to pay to females, as females. 
5 I shall believe that this principle actuates our conduct, 
when I can forget, that in the nineteenth century of the era 
from which we date our civility, we are but just beginning 

1 Jeremiah, i., 13. 

2 EzEKiEL, xi., 43. 



282 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA 

to leave off the very frequent practice of whipping females 
in public, in common with the coarsest male offenders. 

I shall believe it to be influential, when I can shut my 
eyes to the fact, that in England women are still occasion- 
ally — hanged. 

I shall believe in it, when actresses are no longer subject 
to be hissed off a stage by gentlemen. 

I shall believe in it, when Dorimant hands a fish-wife 
across the kennel; or assists the apple-woman to pick up 
her wandering fruit, which some unlucky dray has just i 
dissipated. 

I shall believe in it, when the Dorimants in humbler life, 
who would be thought in their way notable adepts in this 
refinement, shall act upon it in places where they are not 
known, or think themselves not observed — ^^'hen I shall see iJ^ 
the traveller for some rich tradesman part with his admired 
box-coat, to spread it over the defenceless shoulders of the 
poor woman, who is passing to her parish on the roof of the 
same stage-coach with him, drenched in the rain — ^^vhen I 
shall no longer see a woman standing up in the pit of a 2 
London theatre, till she is sick and faint with the exertion, 
with men about her, seated at their ease, and jeering at her 
distress; till one, that seems to have more manners or 
conscience than the rest, significantly declares "she should , 
be welcome to his seat, if she were a little younger and hand- 2.^ 
somer." Place this dapper warehouseman, or that rider, 
in a circle of their own female acquaintance, and you shall 
confess you have not seen a politer-bred man in Lothbury. 

Lastly, I shall begin to believe that there is some such 
principle influencing our conduct, when more than one-half 30 
of the drudgery and coarse servitude of the world shall 
cease to be performed by women. 



MODERN GALLANTRY 283 

Until that day comes, I shall never believe this boasted 
point to be anything more than a conventional fiction; a 
pageant got up between the sexes, in a certain rank, and at 
a certain time of life, in which both find their account 
equally. 

I shall be even disposed to rank it among the salutary 
fictions of life, when in polite circles I shall see the same 
attentions paid to age as to youth, to homely features as 
to handsome, to coarse complexions as to clear — to the 

woman, as she is a woman, not as she is a beauty, a fortune, 
or a title. 

I shall believe it to be something more than a name,, 
when a well-dressed gentleman in a well-dressed company 
can advert to the topic of female old age without exciting, 

5 and intending to excite, a sneer: — ^when the phrases "anti- 
quated virginity," and such a one has "overstood her 
market,'' pronounced in good company, shall raise imme- 
diate offence in man, or woman, that shall hear them 
spoken. 

Joseph Paice, of Bread Street Hill, merchant, and one of 
the Directors of the South-Sea Company — the same to 
whom Edwards, the Shakspeare commentator, has ad- 
dressed a fine sonnet — ^was the only pattern of consistent 
gallantry I have met with. He took me under his shelter 

5 at an early age, and bestowed some pains upon me. I owe 
to his precepts and example whatever there is of the man of 
business (and that is not much) in my composition. It 
was not his fault that I did not profit more. Though bred 
a Presbyterian, and brought up a merchant, he was the 

finest gentleman of his time. He had not one system of 
attention to females in the drawing-room, and another in the 
shop, or at the stall. I do not mean that he made no dis- 



284 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA 

tinctlon. But he never lost sight of sex, or overlooked it in 
the casualties of a disadvantageous situation. I have seen 
him stand bare-headed — smile if you please — to a poor 
servant girl, while she has been inquiring of him the way to 
some street — in such a posture of enforced civility, as 
neither to embarrass her in the acceptance, nor himself in 
the offer, of it. He was no dangler, in the common 
acceptation of the word, after women: but he reverenced 
and upheld, in every form in which it came before him, 
womanhood. I have seen him — nay, smile not — tenderly 
escorting a market-woman, whom he had encountered in a 
shower, exalting his umbrella over her poor basket of fruit, 
that it might receive no damage, with as much carefulness 
as if she had been a countess. To the reverend form of 
Female Eld he would yield the wall (though it were to an 
ancient beggar-woman) with more ceremony than we could 
afford to show our grandams. He was the Preux Chevalier 
of Age; the Sir Calidore, or Sir Tristan, to those who have 
no Calidores or Tristans to defend them. The roses, that 
had long faded thence, still bloomed for him in those 
withered and yellow cheeks. 

He was never married, but in his youth he paid his 
addresses to the beautiful Susan Winstanley — old Win- 
stanley's daughter of Clapton — ^who, dying in the early days 
of their courtship, confirmed him in the resolution of 
perpetual bachelorship. It was during their short court-^ 
ship, he told me, that he had been one day treating his mis- 
tress with a profusion of civil speeches — the common gal- 
lantries — to which kind of thing she had hitherto mani- 
fested no repugnance — but in this instance v/ith no effect. 
He could not obtain from her a decent acknowledgment in 
return. She rather seemed to resent his compliments. He 



MODERN GALLANTRY 285 

could not set it down to caprice, for the lady had always 
shown herself above that littleness. When he ventured on 
the following day, finding her a little better humored, to 
expostulate with her on her coldness of yesterday, she con- 

5 fessed, with her usual frankness, that she had no sort of 
dislike to his attentions; that she could even endure some 
high-flown compliments ; that a young woman placed in her 
situation had a right to expect all sort of civil things said to 
her; that she hoped she could digest a dose of adulation, 

10 short of insincerity, w^ith as little injury to her humility as 
most young women : but that — a little before he had com- 
menced his compliments — she had overheard him by 
accident, in rather rough language, rating a young woman, 
who had not brought home his cravats quite to the op- 

15 pointed time, and she thought to herself, "As I am Miss 
Susan Winstanley, and a young lady — a reputed beauty, 
and known to be a fortune, — I can have my choice of the 
finest speeches from the mouth of this very fine gentleman 
who is courting me — but if I had been poor Mary Such-a- 

«o one {naming the milliner), — and had failed of bringing 
home the cravats to the appointed hour — though perhaps I 
had sat up half the night to forward them — what sort of com- 
pliments should I have received then? — And my woman's 
pride came to my assistance; and I thought, that if it were 

25 only to do me honor, a female, like myself, might have 
received handsomer usage; and I was determined not to 
accept any fine speeches, to the compromise of that sex, 
the belonging to which was after all my strongest claim and 
title to them." 

30 I think the lady discovered both generosity, and a just 
way of thinking, in this rebuke, which she gave her lover* 
and I have sometimes imagined, that the uncommon strain 



286 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA 

of courtesy, which through life regulated the actions and 
behavior of my friend towards all of womankind indis- 
criminately, owed its happy origin to this seasonable lesson 
from the lips of his lamented mistress. 

I wish the whole female world would entertain the same s 
notion of these things that Miss Winstanley showed. Then 
we should see something of the spirit of consistent gallantry; 
and no longer witness the anomaly of the same man — a 
pattern of true politeness to a wife — of cold contempt, or 
rudeness, to a sister — the idolater of his female mistress — lo 
the disparager and despiser of his no less female aunt, or 
unfortunate — ^still female — maiden cousin. Just so much 
respect as a woman derogates from her own sex, in what- 
ever condition placed — ^her handmaid, or dependent — she 
deserves to have diminished from herself on that score; is 
and probably will feel the diminution, when youth, and 
beauty, and advantages, not inseparable from sex, shall lose 
of their attraction. What a woinan should demand of a 
man in courtship, or after it, is first — respect for her as she 
is a woman; — ^and next to that — to be respected by him 2c 
above all other women. But let her stand upon her female 
character as upon a foundation; and let the attentions, 
incident to individual preference, be so many pretty addita- 
ments and ornaments — as many and as fanciful, as you 
please — to that main structure. Let her first lesson be — 25 
with sweet Susan Winstanley — to reverence her sex. 



NOTES 

THE SOUTH-SEA HOUSE 

Page 45 line l. Bank: The Bank of England, occupying the block 
bounded by Threadneedle St.. Prince's St., Lothbury, and Bartholomew 
Lane. It is an irregular and isolated building, covering about four acres 
one story m height, without exterior windows. The Bank was Iouk 
knomi popularly as "The Old Lady in Threadneedle Street": but Hare 
{Walks xn London) says that the name is now almost forgotten. 

3. Annuitant: Lamb was not yet an "annuitant" when he wrote this 
being still in the East India House. The Flower Pot: An inn in BishopsI 
gate Street the starting-point and booking-office for coaches running 
to the northern suburbs of London. DaUton and Shacklewell were formerly 
suburbs of London, but are now outlying districts of the city itself The 
Lambs took a lodging in Dalston in 1802. 

7. Bishopsgate: A street in London, divided into "Bishopsgate within" 
and Bishopsgate without" at the point where stood the old Bishopsgate 
the principal entrance through the northern wall of old London The gate 
was destroyed in the reign of George II. The comer (Threadneedl St 
and Bishopsgate) where the South-Sea House stood is but twrblocks ?rom 
the site of the East India House in Leadenhall St. 

12 and footnote. Baldutha: i. e., the city of the Clyde. The quota, 
tion .s from Carthon, one of the prose poems published in 1760-63 by 

lat^sfrom t^r ^V'T'^'^^ ''''''^' '^'^^'^ ^^^-^-^ to b^tLs^ 
lations from the ancient Gaelic bard Oisin. The true reading is "I have 

seen the walls of Balclutha, but they were desolate." 

nTl!\l2l77JT' ^'VT^ 1702-1714. Two first monarchs: George I. 
U714-1727) and George II. (1727-1760). 

10. Dollars, etc.: Dollar was the English name of various continental 
corns, among them the Spanish dollar, "also called pillardSar Xm 

^'pJ^rZt, Bk^T6'78l^^^^"- '" '''-'' ^"-- "• ^' "-'^^ 

orlLJd'Z%Z^VT^ ^n ^^^^'"' ^ *^^^^dous financial scheme 
on t?e steneth of r^^ Sea Company to borrow money and issue stock 

°Thereftsafof Sn l^n^^ °' '^^^^ ^^^ ^^^'^ America, 

tii t!f M FT ^"^ ^"'^^'^ '""^^ commercial relations with England made 

the privileges of the company worthless: but by means of T^ot 



288 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA 

speculating operations and the infatuation of the people, its shares were 
inflated from £100 to £1050." {Cent. Diet.) Its collapse (in 1720) 
spread great distress throughout England. Its London oflQce was the 
South-Sea House. 

26. SuperfcBtation: A figurative use of the word, which was apparently 
a favorite of Lamb's, meaning 'an excrescent growth.' 

47:3. Fawx (Fawkes), Guy (1570-1606): One of the conspirators in 
the "Grimpowder Plot." He was arrested as he was entering the cellar 
under the Parliament House (which had been filled with barrels of powder) 
on the night of Nov. 4-5, 1605, and after trial executed. November 5, 
Guy Fawkes Day, is celebrated with fireworks and crackers, and 
Fawkes is often hanged and burned in eflOlgy. Lamb printed an essay 
on Guy Vaux (London Mag. 1823). 

5. Manes: The shades of the dead, considered by the Romans to be 
tutelary divinities. 

9. 'Change: The Royal Exchange, opposite the Bank. The present 
Exchange was built in 1842-44, taking the place of the first building, 
erected 1564-70, 

9. India House: The oflQce of the English East India Company (In- 
corporated 1600 under the title "The Governor and Company of Merchants 
of London Trading with the East Indies"), at the corner of Leadenhallj 
and Lime Streets; destroyed shortly after the dissolution of the Company 
about 1860. 

19. Living accounts: Mr. Lucas points out that "here Elia begins his 
'matter-of-lie' career." In the Accotmtant's oflQce of the India House, 
he was Uving among figures all day. 

23. Rubric interlacings : The flourish after a signature (in old docu- 
ments often imitating grill- work) is called a rubric, from being done in red 
ink. 

32. Penknives: The qualifying word in this compound had a real 
significance when Lamb wrote. 

48:2. Herculaneum: Destroyed in the eruption of Vesuvius, A. D. 79, 
by streams of mud and lava. Systematic explorations were carried on 
there under French authority, 1806-1815. Pounce-boxes: The predeces- 
sors of blotting-paper were receptacles with perforated tops for shaking 
pounce (a sort of powder) or black sand on wet writing to dry the ink. 

13. Humorists: i. e., eccentric persons. 

24. Cambro-Briton: A Welshman. 

25. Choleric complexion: i. e., irritable nature. 

30. Maccaronies: The use of the word in "Yankee Doodle" is based 
on its sense of 'dandy,' as here. 

31. Gib-cat: A tom-cat. 

49:6. Anderton's: A real coffee-house in London. 



NOTES 289 

17. Pennant, Thomas: A Welsh antiquary, author of an account of 
London (1790). 

20. Rosamond's Pond: "A sheet of water formerly lying in the north- 
west corner of St. James's Park in London ... It was filled up in 
1770." {Cent. Diet.) 

21. Mulberry Gardens: "A place of refreshment in London, much fre- 
quented by persons of quality in the 17th century." (Cent. Did.) 

49:21. Cheap: Cheapside, the central east and west thoroughfare of 
the City of London; one of the busiest streets in the world; formerly a 
large open common where markets (whence the name) and assemblies 
were held. There were formerly two conduits, the Great at the east end 
and the Little at the north, water being brought thither from Paddington. 
. 23. Hogarth, "William (1697-1764): A celebrated English painter, best 
known by his satirical pictures, such as "The Rake's Progress," "Mar- 
riage a la Mode," etc. 

25. Heroic confessors: Huguenot refugees. Some of them settled 
in the parish of St. Giles's, London, after the Revocation of the Edict of 
Nantes by Louis XIV. in 1685. A church, still standing in that part of 
Charing Cross Road which was formerly known as Hog Lane, was used by 
French Protestant refugees till 1822. Seven Dials is a locality east of 
Charing Cross Road long known as a center of poverty and crime. 

50:1. Westminster Hall: Part of the ancient Palace of "Westminster. 
now a vestibule to the Houses of Parliament. It has been the scene of 
many important events in English history. 

20. Derwentwater, James Radcliflfe, Earl of (1689-1716): An English 
Catholic nobleman, beheaded for his part in the rebellion of 1715. 
" 29. Decus ef solamen: "His aid in arms, his ornament in peace." 

Dryden's translation.. 

51:5. Orphean lyre: In Greek legend, Orpheus, Apollo's son, had power 
to charm all animate and inanimate things with his lyre. 

11. "Sweet breasts": i. e., musical voices; an Elizabethan phrase. 

16. Midas: In Greek legend, a Bang of Phrygia to whom was granted 
the wish that everything he touched might be turned to gold. Apollo 
gave him a pair of ass's ears for saying that Pan played better than Apollo; 
Lamb of course takes him as the type of bad taste in music. 

52:28. Water-party: i. e., a picnic. 

63:3. Fenri/ Man (1747-1799): Author of essays and letters, and from 
1776 deputy secretary of the South Sea Company. 

9. Barbican: A locality in Cripplegate, London, so-called from a former 
watch-tower. Milton hved here (1646-47) and his name has been given 
to a street near by (formerly Grub Street, of unsavory note as the abode 
of small authors). 

13. Public Ledgers and Chronicles: "Man contributed a series of letters 
on education to Woodfall's Morning Chronicle. He also wrote for the 
London Gazette." (Lucas.) 



290 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA 

14 Chatham, etc.: Chatham (William Pitt) was premier, and Shelburne 
was secretary of state under him, 1766-68. Rockingham preceded Chat- 
ham as premier. Chatham and Eic/imond opposed England's policy toward 
the colonies. 

15. Howe, Burgoyne, Clinton, Keppel: English generals and admirals 
in the war with the colonies. 

17 Wilkes, Sawhridge, Bull: Lord Mayors of London. Dunning de- 
fended Wilkes, who had been expelled from Parliament, in his trial before 
Pratt, the Lord Chancellor. 

54-3. Marlborough, Cave, etc.: Cave (1691-1754) was a noted pub- 
lisher the founder of the Genfieman's Magazine, and a fnend of Dr. Samuel 
Johnson who for a time had a place in the postofflce as clerk of the franks. 
He "often stopped franks which were given by members of parliament 
to their friends because he thought such extension of a peculiar nght 
iUegal Having stopped, among others, a frank given to the old 

Duchess of 'Marlborough by Mr. Walter Plummer, he was cited before the 
House as for a breach of privilege ... and was at last dismissed. 
(Johnson's Life of Cave.) A frank is the privilege of sending letters free 
of postage. The Duchess, a favorite of Queen Anne's, was the wife of the 
first Duke of Marlborough, the great English general. 

10 Pastoral M—: Lamb wrote out for a fellow-clerk in the India 
House a Key to the blanks and concealed names in Elia. His entry for 
this blank was, "Maynard, hang'd himself." 

19. Swan-like: The swan was fabled to sing most sweetly at the approach 
of death. 

24 Trying the question: Probably he was constantly involved in law- 
suits' and bought property with clouded titles; but perhaps Lamb means 
that he found his chief pleasure in studying and discussing law-cases and 
actually spent good money for such trash as reports of legal proceedings. 

OXFORD IN THE VACATION 

55- tnie Oxford: Mr. Lucas believes that Lamb wrote this paper in 
Cambridge/ 'where he spent a few weeks in the summer of 1820, and trans- 
ferred the scene to Oxford by way of mystification." 

10. Quis sculpsit: i. e., the engraver's name (literally,"who engraved it"). 

11 Vivares Woollett: English engravers. WooUett is said to have 
"carried landscape engraving to a perfection unknown before his time. 
{Cent. Diet.) 

17 College- i. e., company. Notched: i. e., closely-cut, shaven, an 
epithet apphed by the CavaUers to the Puritans, or Round-heads. 

18. A scrivener was a public writer, notary, copyist. 

20. Agnize: A pet word of Lamb's, meaning acknowledge, confess. 

56:6. Cart-rucks: Ruts, parallel lines. 

12. Commodities: Conveniences, agreeable things. 



NOTES 291 

15. Joseph's vest: i. e., a piece of (literary) patchwork. See Genesis, 
xxxvii, 3, marginal reading. 

18. Red-letter days: i. e., holidays (see Cent. Diet.). In 1820 the 
accountants' oflBce of the India House observed only five holidays in the 
year. (Lucas.) 

23. Christ's: i. e., Christ's Hospital, the Blue Coat School. 

24. Baskett Prayer-hook: John Baskett (died 1742), King's printer, 
published his first prayer-book 1741; other editions 1746-1757. The royal 
patent bestowed the privilege of printing and selling bibles. One of 
Baskett's bibles, the "Vinegar Bible" of 1716-17 (so-called from a mis- 
print for Vineyard in the heading of Luke, xx), was so carelessly printed 
that it was at once named "a Baskett-full of printers' errors." 

25. Bartlemy: St. Bartholomew, who according to the tradition was 
flayed alive. 

26. Marsyas: In Greek mythology a sat3T who challenged Apollo to 
a musical contest. Apollo defeated him and then flayed him alive for his 
presumption, 

27. Spagnoletti: Jusepe Ribera, called Spagnoletto, a Spanish painter, 
noted for his harsh and realistic manner. 

30. Better Jude: Judas the brother of Simon, also called Thaddeus. 
See Matthew, x, 3; Luke, vi, 16. St. Simon and St. Jude's Day is the 28th 
of October. 

57:2. Qaudy-day: t. e., ; a holiday, especially an English university 
festival. 

8. Epiphany: The Christian festival, also called Twelfth-day, cele- 
brated on the 6th of January. It closes the Christmas observances, and 
especially commemorates the visit of the Magi, or Wise Men, to Christ. 

17. Selden, John (1584-1654): A learned English jurist, antiquary, 
and orientalist. 

18. Usher, James (1580-1656): A British prelate, theologian, and 
scholar; proposed a scheme of biblical chronology — that commonly printed 
in the standard versions of the English Bible — which was universally 
accepted until recently. 

20. Bodley, Sir Thomas (1545-1613): An English diplomatist and 
scholar, founder of the great Bodleian Library of Oxford University. 
23. Institution: i. e., instruction, a rare and obsolete use. 

28. Ad eundem: i. e., to the same (degree), a phrase used when a mem- 
ber of one imiversity is admitted without examination to the corresponding 

I degree or standing in another university. 

30. Sizar: A sizar was an undergraduate at Cambridge who received 
an allowance of food, or size, as it is called (see the interesting quotation 
in Cent. Diet, under size, def. 2). 

58:1. Servitor: Servitors were formerly students at Oxford of much the 
same grade as the Cambridge sizars. Their name comes from their duty 



292 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA 

of waiting on the table of the fellows and gentlemen commoners. Gentle-^ 
man Commoner: The gentlemen commoners are the highest sort of com- 
moners at Oxford — students who do not receive allowances from the funds 
of the college, but pay their own way and eat at the common table. The 
Oxford commoner corresponds to the Cambridge pensioner. 

2. Proceed: In English university parlance, to take the degree of. 

4. Vergers: Pew-openers. 

7. Christ Church: One of the largest colleges of Oxford, with a great 
quadrangle ("Tom Quad") and tower. Properly speaking, Lamb should 
not have referred to it as Christ's, as he does in 1. 11. Christ's College is 
one of the colleges of Cambridge. See note to p. 55, title. 

9. Seraphic Doctor: It was not uncommon in the Middle Ages to nick- 
name the great doctors of theology: thus Aquinas was called "Doctor 
Angelicus," Bonaventura, "Doctor Seraphicus." Larab's use of the title 
does not imply that he must be thinking of some particular celebrity. 
"And Doctors: teachers grave, and with great names, 
Seraphic, Subtile, or Irrefragable, 
By their admiring scholars dignified." 

— Southey, Joan of Arc, Book III. 

11. Magdalen: A college of Oxford, famous for its beautiful tower. 
(Usually pronovinced Maudlin.) 

13. Pay a devoir: i. e., pay one's respects. 

15. Beadsman: In England inmates of almshouses are called beads- 
men and beadswomen. 

21. Chaucer, Cook, Manciple: An excellent instance of Lamb's neatness 
in allusion, though there is no evidence that Chaucer was ever at either 
university. Manciple means a purveyor, especially of an English college 
or inn of court. Chaucer describes a cook and a manciple in the Prologue 
to The Canterbury Tales. 

24. Antiquity: In the rhetoric of this passage, as well as in the allusion 
to half-Januses, Lamb seems to owe a debt to Sir Thomas Browne. There 
is a superb paragraph of DeQuincey's (Works, Masson's ed., vol. I, p. 48) 
on Solitude that reads like a magnified reverberation of this of Lamb's. ' 

30. Half-Januses: Janus was a primitive deity of the Romans, regarded 
as the doorkeeper of Heaven and the patron of beginnings and endings; 
hence the first month of the year was named fer him. His temple in Rome 
was closed only in times of imiversal peace, ile was the protector of doors 
and gateways and the god of the sun's rising and setting; and hence was 
represented with two faces, one to the east and one to the west. 

59:9. Oxenford: An older form of Oxford. See Chaucer, Prol. 285. 
Arride: To please (obsolete and rare). 

19. Sciential apples: The fruit of the Tree of Knowledge, in the Garden 
of Eden. 

22. Varice lectiones: Variant readings. 



NOTES 293 

24. Three witnesses: See I. John, v. 7, Authorized Version. This verse 
is omitted, from the Revised Version, having been shown by Porson to be 
spurious. 

26. Porson, Richard (1759-1808): A famous EngUsh classical scholar, 
professor of Greek at Cambridge. O. D.: "George Dyer, poet," in Lamb's 
Key. He was a scholar and antiquarian. His chief works are History of 
the University and College of Cambridge and Privileges of the University of 
Cambridge. 

28. Oriel: A college of Oxford. 

32. Tall Scapula: A tall (z. e., untrimmed) copy of Scapula's Greek 
Lexicon. 

60:3. Clifford's Inn: One of the Inns of Chancery, in Chancery Lane, 
London. Originally a sort of law school preparatory for the Inns of Court 
(see note on The Temple, p. 163, 1. 2), the Inns of Chancery now serve 
chiefly as quarters for attorneys, solicitors, and other persons connected 
with the legal profession. Clifford's Inn was subsidiary to the Inner 
Temple. 

6. Apparitors: Court servants, process-servers, etc. Promoters: In- 
formers. 

17. C .• Cambridge University. 

22. Caputs: An abbreviation of the phrase caput senatus (literally, 
head of the senate), a council or ruling body in the University of 
Cambridge. 

27. Glebe lands: Lands belonging to parish churches or ecclesiastical 
benefices. In manu: i. e., in actual occupancy. 

61:4. Temple: See note on p. 163,1.2. 

7. Our friend M.: Basil Montague (1770-1851), a lawyer and miscel- 
laneous writer. 

17. Queen Lar: The Lares were tutelary household divinities of the 
Romans. 

24. Another Sosia: In Plautus's comedy Amphitryon there are two 
Sosias, a true and a false. 

62:3. Mount Tabor: A wooded moimtain in Palestine, according to 
tradition the scene of the Transfiguration. Parnassus: A mountain ridge 
in Greece, celebrated as the Mount of Apollo and the Muses; hence a symbol 
of poetry. Plato: The famous Greek ideal philosopher. 

4. Harrington, James (1611-1677): An English political writer. His 
chief work was a treatise on civil government, The Commonwealth of Oceana. 
These names Lamb uses as symbols of an exalted idealism. 

11. "House of pure Emanuel": Emmanuel College, Cambridge. 

19. Even-song: Evening service. 

25. Agar's wish: By mistake for Agur, a Hebrew prophet whose wish 
was "Give me neither poverty nor riches." Proverbs, xxx. 8. 



294 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA 

29. Under-working: The Cent. Did. gives the noun underwork, "suboi"' 
dinate work, petty affairs," from Addison* 

63:13. Strong lines in fashion: TMs is probably an aUusion to Byron, 
whose romances and Manfred had been published and whose Don Juan 
was coming out when this was written. 

19. Bath, Buxton, Scarborough, Harrogate (Harrowgate) : English watering 
places. 

21. Cam: A river which gives its name to the city of Cambridge, situate 
on its banks; also called the Granta. Isis: A name sometimes given to 
the Thames in its upper course, especially near Oxford, 

CHRIST'S HOSPITAL FIVE AND THIRTY YEARS AGO 

64: title. Christ's Hospital: The Blue Coat School, in Newgate Street. — 
"A school for 1200 boys and 100 girls, founded by Edward VI. ... It 
occupies the site of an ancient monastery of the Grey Friars (see note, p. 79, 
1.12). . . . The general government of the school is in the hands of a 
large 'Court of Governors,' but the internal and real management is con- 
ducted by the President, Treasurer, and 'Committee of Almoners.' The 
original costume of the boys is still retained, consisting of long blue gowns, 
yellow stockings, and knee-breeches. No head-covering is worn even in 
winter. The pupils — admitted between the ages of 8 and 1 — must be the 
children of parents whose income is insuflQcient for their proper education 
and maintenance. They are first sent to the preparatory school at Hert- 
ford, whence they are transferred according to their progress to the city 
establishment. Their education — partly of a commercial nature — is com- 
pleted at the age of 16. A few of the more talented pupils are, however, 
prepared for a university career and form the two highest classes of the 
school, known as Grecians and Deputy-Grecians. There are also 40 King's 
Boys, forming the mathematical school foimded by Charles II. in 1672. 
The school possessed many ancient privileges, some of which it still retains. 
On New Year's I>ay the Bang's Boys used to appear at Court; and on 
Easter Tuesday the entire school is presented to the Lord Mayor at the 
Mansion House, when each boy receives the gift of a coin fresh from the mint. 
A line in the swimming bath marks the jimction of three parishes. . . . 
Among the pictures are 'Founding of the Hospital by Edward VI.' ascribed 
to Holbein; 'Presentation of the King's Boys at the Court of James II.,' a 
very large work by Verrio." (Baedeker's London.) 

"The London history of the school is now ended. The boys have gone 
to Sussex, where, near Horsham, the new buildings have been erected, 
and the old Newgate Street haven is being demolished as I write (February, 
1903) to make room for offices, warehouses, and an extension of St. Bar- 
tholomew's Hospital." (Lucas.) 

1. Tn Mr. Lamb's "Works": This essay is transparent enough in its 
pretense of not being Lamb's work. 

16. Sub-treasurer: Randal Norris, for many years sub-treasurer of the 
Inner Temple; an old friend of Lamb's father. Mary Lamb was a brides- 



NOTES 295 

maid at his wedding. Lamb's essay A Deathbed, published in the first 
edition of the Last Essays of Elia, but afterwards withdrawn, described his 
death. 

19. Crug: Mr. Lucas says that crug is still current slang. 

26. Banyan: "Banian days, originally two days in the week . . . 
on which sailors in the British navy had no flesh meat served up to them." 
{Cent. Diet.) Banian means a Hindu trader, belonging to a caste of 
strict vegetarian practice. 

27. Double-refined: Sugar of good quality. 
65:2. Caro equina: Horseflesh. 

4. Crags: Necks. See scrag in Cent. Diet. 

9. Griskin: Certain small bones of pork — a provincial word. 

14. Regale: E"\idently used in the sense of delight, savor, relish. 
Gates: Delicacies; an archaic word, now only in poetic or consciously 
literary use. 

15. The Tishbite: Elijah. See I. Kings, xvii. 6. 

22. / was a poor friendless boy: Here Lamb speaks, it is sometimes said, 
"in the person of Coleridge." Coleridge was a poor, friendless, homesick 
boy, who had come up to London from a town "far in the west" — Ottery 
St. Mary in Devonshire; but Lamb doubtless knew other homesick, friend- 
less boys than Coleridge. 

66:13. Excursions . . . relish: "Our deUghtful excursions in the 
summer holidays to the New Kiver, near Newington, where, like others, we 
would live the long day in the water, never caring for dressing ourselves 
when we had once stripped; our savoury meals afterwards, when we came 
home almost famished with staying out all day without our dinners; our 
visits at other times to the Tower, where by ancient privilege we had free 
access to all the curiosities." (Lamb, Recollections of Christ's Hospital.) 
The New River is an artificial stream that brings water for the supply of 
the City of London. See Chambers' Book of Days. 

67:2. Tower: The Tower of London, once a palace, later famous as a 
state prison, and now a historical museum. It is perhaps the most in- 
teresting historical monument in England. "Blue-coat boys still have 
this right of free entrance to the Tower; but the Uons are no more. They 
were transferred to the Zoological Gardens in 1831." (Lucas.) 

4. L.'s governor: Samuel Salt (see note p. 168,1.5), in whose rooms in 
the Temple the Lamb family lived. 

28. Nevis, St. Kitts: Islands in the British West Indies. 

68:5. Leads: The roof, from the use of sheets or plates of lead for roofing 
purposes. 

7. Cry roast meat: A proverbial phrase meaning to publish one's good 
fortime. Cf . Fielding's Tom Jones. Bk. IV. Ch. v, and see Cent. Diet, under 
roast. 

8. Caligula's minion: The horse that the Roman Emperor Caligula 
made a Roman consul. Minion here means favorite. See p. 121, I. 6, 



296 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA 

15. Client was dismissed, etc.: The ass was driven to Smithfleid, long 
famous for its cattle-market. 

18. L.'s admired Perry: In the Recollections of Christ's Hospital Lamb 
had written of Perry in an enthusiastic strata. Perry was appointed 
steward of the school in 1761 and died in harness 1785 (Lucas). Lamb 
speaks of the deep effect his death had on the boys. 

19. Facile: Comphant, easy-going, now a rather rare use, echoing 
exactly a transferred sense of the Latin facilis. 

26. "By Verrio," etc.: Lamb had mentioned the "stately dJning-hall 
hung round with pictures by Verrio, Lely, and others, one of them sur- 
passing in size and grandeur almost any other in the EUngdom." Verrio 
was an Italian painter, employed in the decorations of Windsor Palace and 
Hampton Court. Sir Peter Lely was famous for his portraits of the 
beauties of the com-t of Charles II. 

69:2. The Trojan, etc.: When Aeneas came to Carthage he saw pictiires 
of the Trojan war in the Temple of Jimo which Dido, the Carthaginian queen, 
was building. Lamb has Dryden's line in mind, but misquotes; it reaUy is, 
"And with an empty picture fed his mind." 

70:7. Chancery Lane: Leads off Fleet Street, on the other side from the 
Temple. Here were Clifford's Inn, and other abodes of those connected 
with the courts. Lamb and his sister lived in Southampton Buildings, 
Chancery Lane, in 1800 and again in 1809. 

15. Hathaway, Matthias: Steward of Christ's Hospital 1790-1813. 
(Lucas.) 

23. Young stork: The fidelity and amiabihty of storks are traditional. 

71:11. Bedlam: The hospital of St. Mary of Bethlehem ("""hence 
"Bedlam") in London, afterwards a limatic asylmn; as a common noun, 
any madhouse. 

72:1. Auto da fe: Literally, act of faith (Portuguese); the execution 
of judgment upon persons condemned by the Inquisition. 

3. "Watchet weeds": i. e., his blue coat. Watchet was a favorite 
word of Lamb's. 

8. Disfigurements in Dante: In the Inferno Dante teUs how sowers 
of discord, heretics, and the like were pimished by mutilation and disease. 

18. Ultima Supplicia: Last, or extreme, punishment. 

30. San Benito: The yellow garment worn by the victims of the 
Inquisition at their execution. 

31. Runagates: Deserters (a corruption of renegade). 

73:12. James Boyer: "Bom in 1736, was admitted to the school in 
1744, and passed to BaUiol [Oxford]. He resigned his Upper Grammar 
Mastership in 1799." (Lucas.) He was still li\ing when Lamb wrote 
Recollections of Christ's Hospital (1813). See p. 77, 1. 16, where he is 
spoken of with respect. 

13. Matthew Field: "The Rev. Matthew Feilde, also vicar of Ugley and 
curate of Berden." (Lucas.) 



NOTES 297 

17. Accidence: A book containing tlie rudiments of grammar; strictly 
that part of grammar that deals with the inflections of words. 

74:5. Peter Wilkins, The Life and Adventures of: A story by Robert 
Pellock, published 1751, relating the adventures of a sailor shipwrecked 
near the South Pole. He found a winged race of Glums and Gawress, and 
married one of the latter. The two other books mentioned are said to be 
trashy romances. 

10. Parentheses: Lamb seems to have in mind the literal meaning of 
the Greek word, "a putting in beside." 

12. "French and English": A httle boys' slate game, less complicated 
even than tit-tat-to. See Cassell's Book of Indoor Amusements. 

15. Rousseau, Jean Jacques: A Swiss-French social philosopher (1712- 
1778). His ideas helped to prepare the way for the French Revolution. 
Lamb alludes to Rousseau's Emile, ou de V Education (1762), a work that 
caused its author's exile from France "and laid the foundation of modern 
pedagogy. ' ' John Locke, (1632-1704): A celebrated English philosopher, 
author of the Essay on the Human Understanding (1690), Some Thoughts 
Concerning Education (1693), and other works. 

26. Phasdrus: Wrote fables in verse, formerly used as a stock text-book 
for classes in elementary Latin, 

75:3. Helots: Serfs among the ancient Spartans. 

7. Xenophon: A Greek historian, whose Anabasis is still a standard 
text-book for beginners in Greek. Plato's Dialogues are used as text-books 
for more advanced students. 

9. The Samite: "Pythagoras of Samos, who forbade his pupils to speak 
until they had listened through five years of his lectures." (Lucas.) 

10. Goshen: That part of Egypt where Jacob and his sons settled when 
they fled from the famine in Canaan. It was not visited by the plagues 
that smote Pharaoh and his land (see Genesis, Iv-lvii; Exodus, viii). Hence, 
Lamb uses Goshen to mean a sort of earthly paradise, an unreal world, 
apart from the concerns and business of real life. See pp. 175, 230. 

20. Elysian, Tartarus: In classical mythology the under world was 
divided into two regions: Elysium, or the Elysian Fields, the abode of the 
blessed dead; and Tartarus, the place of punishment of the wicked. 

25. Ululantes: Howling sufferers. 

28. Scrannel: Harsh, .squeaking, grating. See Milton, Lycidas, 1. 124. 

76: footnote. Garrick, David (1717-1779): Celebrated English actor 
and dramatist, 

76:2. Flaccus's quibble: "In [Horace's] Satires, Bk. I, viii, 34, where 
Rex has the double meaning of King, a private surname, and King, a 
monarch. The thin jests in Terence are in Andrea — tristis severitas in vultu 
— 'puritanic rigour in his coimtenance,' says one of the comic characters 
of a palpable har; and in the Adelphi, where, after a father has counselled 
his son to look into the lives of men as in a mirror, the slave counsels the 
scullions to look into the stewpans" [inspicere in patinas]. (Lucas.) 



298 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA 

4. Vis: Force, vitality. 

8. Caxon: An old cant term for a wig. 

10. Passy: Perhaps slang of the school. ^ 

11. Comet: Comets were anciently regarded as omens of approaching 
disaster. 

23, Devil's Litany: "Litany" is evidently suggested by the division 
of the angry master's sentence into two distinct utterances; cf. devil's mass, 
devil's matins, devil's paternoster, etc. 

25. Rabidus furor: Furious rage. 

27. The Debates: The published record of the speeches in Parhament. 

77:16. Coleridge, Samuel Taylor (1772-1834): English philosopher, 
poet, and literary critic. In his Biogra-phia Literaria he praises Boyer 
(he calls him Bowyer, incorrectly) for his sovmd taste in classic literature, 
his good sense in making the boys study Shakespeare and Milton, his insight 
into the nature of poetry, and his severe and sane criticisms of the boys' 
English compositions; — "a man whose severities, even now, not seldom 
furnish the dreams by which the blind fancy would fain interpret to the 
mind the painful sensations of distempered sleep; but neither lessen nor 
dim the deep sense of my moral and intellectual obligations. He sent 
us to the University excellent Latin and Greek scholars, and tolerable 
Hebraists. Yet our classical knowledge was the least of the good gifts 
we derived from his zealous and conscientious tutorage." See also Coler- 
idge's Table Talk, Aug. 16, 1832. 

18. The Country Spectator: See note, p. 78, 1.13. 

28. Dr. T e: Arthur "William Trollope, who succeeded Beyer as 

Upper Grammar Master. (Lucas.) 

78:5. Fasces: The bundle of rods which the Roman lictors carried 
before the magistrates as the symbol of authority. Here, of course, it is 
used figuratively of the schoolmaster's birch. 

8. Cicero de Amicitia: Cicero's essay on Friendship is one of his best 
known works. 

10. Th ; Sir Edward Thornton, an eminent diplomat. (Lucas.) 

13. Thomas Fanshaw Middleton (1769-1822): Conducted The Country 
Spectator, 1792-3; published a treatise on The Doctrine of the Greek Article, 
1808; was appointed the first Bishop of Calcutta, 1814. See Introd., p. 10. 

17. Sharpe, Granville (1735-1813) : English philanthropist, pamphleteer, 
and scholar. He made an important contribution to New Testament 
scholarship in his canon of the use of the definite article. 

18. Regni novitas: i. e., the recent establishment of British rule. 

20. Jewel, John (1522-1571): Bishop of Salisbury, 1560; author of 
Apologia pro Ecclesia Anglicana. Hooker, Richard (15,53-1600): Cele- 
brated Enghsh divine and theologian, author of Of the Laws of Ecclesiastical 
Polity. His biographer, Izaak Walton, calls him a "most learned, most 
humble, most holy man." 



NOTES 299 

26. Richards, George: Became a governor of Christ's Hospital and 
founded a gold medal for Latin hexameters. (Lucas.) 

28. Poor S , ill-fated M /; "Scott, died in Bedlam; Maunde, 

dismissed school." Lamb's Key (see note, p. 54, 1.10). 

79:3. Dark pillar: In the Old Testament account of the pillar of fire 
and of cloud that led the cliildren of Israel there is nothing to suggest 
Lamb's use of the cloudy column as the symbol of melancholy or hopeless- 
ness. See Exodus, xiii, 21; Numbers, ix, 15-23. Coleridge was known 
also in his later years as a wonderful talker. See Carlyle's account of his 
conversation, in The Life of Sterling. 

8. Mirandula, Giovanni Pico, Count of: "An Italian humanist and 
philosopher, one of the leading scholars of the ItaUan Renaissance." 

9. Jamhlicus, Plotinus: Greek neo-platonic philosophers of the third 
century, A. D. 

11. Pindar: "The greatest of Greek lyric poets." 

12. Grey Friars: The buildings set apart for the purposes of Christ's 
Hospital had belonged to the Grey Friars (also called Minorites and Fran- 
ciscans), whose monastery, founded in 1225, was one of the most important 
religious houses in London. At the Dissolution, Henry VIII. gave the 
property to the City of London. The Church was not destroyed at the 
Great Fire of 1666, but "nothing remains of the monastery except some 
low brick arches of the western cloister." Some of the school buildings 
are modem; the courts handsome and spacious; 685 boys are lodged and 
boarded in the surrounding buildings. (Hare, Walks in London.) 

15. C. V. Le G .• Charles Valentine Le Grice, one of the Grecians 

of Lamb's day. 

26. Cognition: A characteristically Elian use of the word. 

30. Nireus formosus: Nireus was the handsomest man among the 
Greeks at Troy; formosus means comely. 

80:3. "Bl "; Perhaps "blast — !" or "blackguard!" 

6ff. Junior Le G ; "Samuel Le Grice became a soldier and died in 

the West Indies." F .• Joseph Favell, killed in the Peninsular War at 

Salamanca in 1812. Fr ; F. W. Franklin, "master of the Hertford 

branch of the school from 1801 to 1827." Marmaduke T ; "Marma- 

duke Thompson, to whom Lamb dedicated Rosamund Gray in 1798." 
(Lucas.) 

THE TWO RACES OF MEN 

81:6. Alcihiades: A brilliant but dissolute Athenian politician and 
general. Sir Richard Steele (1672-1729) was the friend of Addison, the 
founder of The Tatler and contributor to The Spectator, moralist, loose liver, 
warm-hearted and generous spendthrift. 

7. Brinsley: Richard Brinsley Sheridan (1751-1816), noted dramatist, 
theatrical manager, orator, and politician. His best-known works are The 
Rivals and The School for Scandal. He, too, was a great spendthrift. 



300 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA 



1 



13. Pedantic distinctions of meum and tuum!: Fielding has a very similar 
passage: "An absolute contempt of those ridiculous distinctions of meum 
and tuum which would cause endless disputes did not the law happily de- 
cide them by converting both into suum." (Jonathan Wild, Bk. III.,ch.l4.) 
Meum, mine; tuum, thine; suum, his. Lamb wrote a Latin epigram 
(1830) Suum Cuique, on the same idea, for a schoolboy friend. See Lucas's 
edition, vol. V., p. 339. 

14. Noble simplification of language: Lowell has made effective USB of 
the same idea in his caustic review of The Library of Old Authors: "We 
find Actus Secundus, Scena Primus and exit ambo, and we are interested to 
know that in a London printing-house, two centuries and a half ago, there 
was a philanthropist who wished to simplify the study of the Latin lan- 
guage by reducing all the nounp to one gender and all the verbs to one 
number." 

15. Tooke, Home (1736-1812): An English philologist; his chief 
work, Epea Pteroenta, or The Diversions of Purley, though unscientific, 
had much influence on Englishmen's ideas of etymology a century ago. 

22. Obolary: "Reduced to the possession of only the smallest coins, 
hence, impecunious, poor" {Cent. Diet.). See p. 251, 1. 21. 

. 28. Candlemas, Holy Michael: Candlemas was one of the Scotch 
(farter-days. Michaelmas is an English quarter-day. In Great Britain 
quarter-days (i. e., days that begin quarters of the year) are the usual 
terms, or landlords' and tenants' days for entering or ending leases and for 
paying rent. 

29. Lene tormentum: Literally, gentle torture. (Horace, Odes III, 
xxi, 13.) 

82:1. Cloak of the traveller: In ^Esop's fable the North Wind and the 
Sun try their strength to see which can first strip a wayfaring man of his 
clothes. The Sun succeeds — Moral: Persuasion is better than force. 

15. Ralph Bigod: The name under which Lamb speaks of John Fen- 
wick, with whom he was associated on The Albion, which came to an end 
in 1801 by reason, it is thought, of a lampoon of Lamb's upon the Prince 
of Wales. 

83:3. Alexander: Called "the Great"; who when he had subdued all 
the world, sighed because there were no more worlds to conquer. 

6. Tythe: Tithe as an adjective is obsolete. "Every tithe soul," 
Troilus and Cressida II., ii, 19. 

84:4. Fisc: Treasury, usually used of a state or a prince. 

7. Undeniable: A play on words, of course. 
9. Cana fides: Literally, hoary honesty. 

16. Mumping visnomy: Wliining face. 

85:1. Comberbatch: Silas Tonikyn Comberbach [Sic] was the name 
Samuel Taylor Coleridge assumed when he enlisted in the dragoons, after 
running away from college. The name is sometimes written Comberback, 
e. g., Lucas, Elia, p. 325; but Lamb's spelltag indicates the pronimciation 



NOTES 301 

suflQciently; and, anyway, punning was not much in Coleridge's line. We 
may be sxire that Lamb would have made the pun, if he had had half a 
chance. 

5. Bloomsbury: When Lamb wrote this he was living in Great Russell 
Street over a shop which had once been Will's Coffee House, famous in 
Dryden's day. 

6. Swifzer-like: Like Swiss Guards — a company of Swiss mercenaries 
in the French service, noted for their stature and their courage. The 
Guildhall giants: Two wooden figures, known as Gog and Magog, used 
formerly in city pageants, and now set up, high against the wall, in the 
Guildhall in London. There is a picture of them in Chambers' Book 
of Days, vol. 11., p. 562. 

9. School divinity: Mediaeval scholastic theology, which was versed 
in nice disputations. St. Bonaventura and St. Thomas Aquinas were 
famous scholastic philosophers and theologians of the thirteenth century; 
see note on p. 58, 1. 9. Bellarmino was an Italian cardinal and Jesuit theo- 
logian (1542-1621). 

11. Ascapart: A famous giant in the old romance of Bevis of Hampton. 

22. Browne, Sir Thomas (1605-1682): English physician and author. 
He wrote Religio Medici (1643), Pseudodoxia Epidem,ica, or Inquiry into 
Vulgar Errors (1646), Hydrotaphia, or Urn Burial (1658), The Garden of 
Cyrus, or the Quincuncial Lozenge (1658), and Christian Morals (published 
posthumously 1716). Lamb was fond of his odd ideas and elaborately 
curious style, as was DeQuincey also. 

27. Dodsley, Robert: English bookseller and author; best known for 
his "Select CoUection of Old Plays" (12 vols., 1744). 

28. Vittoria Corombona, or the White Devil: A play by John Webster. 
Is9. Priam^s refuse sons: After the death of Hector, nine of Priam's 

fifty sons were still Uving. Iliad, Bk. XXIV. 

30. Anatomy of Melancholy: By Robert Burton (1621); a curious book 
abounding in quotations from authors of all ages and countries, which 
treats of the causes, nature, and cure of melancholy. Lamb was fond of 
it and published some imitations of it (see Introd., p. 22). 

31. Complete Angler: By Izaak Walton (1653), author also of lives of 
some EngUsh worthies. 

86;1. John Bunde, The Life of: By Thomas Amory (16917-1788). 
Its hero marries seven wives — "is a prodigious hand at matrimony, divinity, 
a song, and a peck." Lamb says " 'Tis very interesting, and an extra- 
ordinary compoimd of all manner of subjects, from the depth of the ludicrous 
to the heights of sublime religious truth." (Letter to Coleridge, June 24, 
1797.) On this whole passage see the excellent appendix on Lamb's Library 
in Lucas's Life, vol. II. 

10. Proselytes of the gate: i. e., those converts to Judaism who were 
not compelled to submit to the regulations of the Mosaic law. 



302 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA 



1 



14. Deodands: Lamb uses the word here in the sense of forfeit, 
pledge, or, as it were, hostage; but properly the word means property 
forfeit to the crown for having been by chance the cause of death. 

19. K ; James Kenney, the dramatist. Lamb got his book back. 

See Descriptive Catalogue of the Library of Charles Lamb, privately printed 
for the Dibdin Club, New York. 

22. Margaret Newcastle: Margaret Cavendish, Duchess of Newcastle 
(1624?-1674), author of poems, plays, letters and discourses on natural 
philosophy, an autobiography, and the biography of her royalist husband. 
Pepys says, "The whole story of this lady is a romance, and all she does 
is romantic." Lamb speaks thus: "The Life of the Duke of Newcastle 
by his Duchess— no casket is rich enough, no casing sufficiently durable, to 
honour and keep safe such a jewel." {Detached Thoughts on Books and 
Reading, in the Last Essays.) 

87:6. Fulke Greville, Lord Brook[e]: English poet and statesman, a 
favorite of Queen Elizabeth, and intimate friend and biographer of Sir Philip 
Sidney. Lamb esteemed his tragedies highly. See Hazlitt's essay On 
Persons One Would Wish to Have Known. 

9. Zimmerman[n], J. G. von: A Swiss physician and philosophical 
writer. He wrote On Solitude (1755), On National Pride (1758). 

19. Daniel, Samuel (1562-1619): An English poet and historian. 

NEW YEAR'S EVE 

87: title. New Year's Eve: This essay was the probable cause of a 
brief falling-out with Southey, who objected (in a review) to Lamb's want 
of a soimder religious feeling. (See Introd., p. 3 2.) 

27. Desuetude: Disuse. 

88:3. Pretermitted: Omitted, disregarded. 

89:11. Alice W — n: Lamb's Key says merely "feigned (Winterton)"; 
but we must understand Ann Simmons (see Introd., p. 18). 

13. Old Dorr ell: In his poem Going or Gone (1827) Lamb writes: 
"And wicked old Dorrell, 
'Gainst whom I've a quarrel" 
and goes on to mention "a poor Fortune, that should have been ours." 
Mr. Lucas thinks there is no doubt that he is the Dorrell who witnessed 
Lamb's father's will. 

25. A notorious . . . : The blanks are in the original text. 

90:22. Idea: In the Platonic sense of archetype or essence. 

25. Singularly conceited: Perhaps unusually self-complacent, but more 
likely Lamb would use thei phrase to mean oddiy whimsical, peculiar. 

91:10. Audits: Periodical reckonings. 

20. Reluct: To struggle against; a rare word. 

92:1. Lavinian shores: A reference to Aeneas's migration to Italy after 
the sack of Troy. 



NOTES . 303 

12. Huge armfuls: Leigh Hunt recalls seeing Lamb kiss an old folio of 
Chapman's Homer. 

22. Problematic: Not puzzling, but questionable, doubtful. Poor 
snakes: "Poor worms," "worms of the dust," etc., are more familiar 
expressions of extravagant humility or contempt; but snake, serpent, 
is an obsolete sense of the word worm. 

24. Burgeon: To bud; Lamb was fond of this old word. 

93:1. Innutritious one: See the Song of Solomon, viii, 8. 

2. The Persian: The Persian religion, Zoroastrianism, was a form of 
sun-worship. 

4. Humours: The thin bodily fluids; a term of antique medicine. 

10. Friar John: "In Rabelais. Friar John when fighting would give 
his fallen foe 'to all the devils in hell!' " (Lucas.) 

15. Privation, positive: Terms of logic. Privation means negation or 
negative. 

19. "Lie down with Kings," etc.: Mr. Lucas, following Hallward and 
Hill, suggests that this is perhaps a compound quotation from Job, Hi, 
13, and Sir Thomas Browne's Urn-Burial; but the echo, if such it is, is not 
close. 

27. "Such as he, etc.: "A common sentiment on tombstones." (Lucas.) 
94:5. Mr. Cotton: Charles Cotton, poet, translator of Montaigne's 

Essays, and author of a Second Part (on fly-fishing) to Walton's Complete 

Angler. 

10. Janus: See note on p. 58, 1.30. 

95:23. The Princess: i. e., Fortime. 

34. Helicon: Really a mountain in Greece, celebrated in Greek mythol- 
ogy as the abode of the Muses; but here used of the fountain of Hippocrene, 
sacred to the muses, on the mountain. The confusion is an old one: Chaucer 
speaks of "Elicon, the clere welle." Spa: A watering-place with medicinal 
springs, in Belgium. 

MRS. BATTLE'S OPINIONS ON WHIST 

96: title. Mrs. Battle: Probably more or less a portrait of Mrs. 
Sarah Burney, wife of Lamb's friend Rear- Admiral James Burney and so 
sister-in-law of Fanny Burney, the novelist. Lamb himself was devoted 
to whist. The footnotes (p. 96) from the original version in the London 
Magazine were not reprinted in the version of 1818. 

26. Under the rose: i. e., in confidence, sub rosa. 

97:18. Pope, Alexander (1688-1744): The chief English poet of the 
early 18th century. The third canto of The Rape of the Lock describes a 
game of Ombre played by the heroine, Belinda, against two gentlemen. 

20. Ombre: A game borrowed from Spain, usually played by three 
persons, as is tradrille (more commonly tredille). 



304 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA 

25. Bowles, William Lisle (1762-1850): Poet, antiquary, and clergy- 
man. His sonnets first fired Coleridge's poetical enthusiasm (see Bio- 
graphia Liter aria); his edition of Pope appeared 1806. 

27. Quadrille: "A modem game, bears great analogy to Ombre, with 
the addition of a fomth player." (Strutt's Book of Sports and Pastimes.) 

32. (SpacfiZZe; The ace of spades. "Spadillio first, unconquerable lord!" 
Rape of the Lock, iii, 49. 

98:5. Sans Prendre Vole: Taking every card when playing single- 
handed. 

17. Machiavel, or Machiavelli, Niccolo (1469-1527): An Italian states- 
man and author. He wrote The Prince, a history of Florence, and 
The AH of War. 

24. Nob: i. e., head. "One for his nob" is a point counted in cribbage 
toT holding the knave of trumps. 

30. Solecism: A blunder, incongruity, inconsistency. 

31. Alliteration: Lamb knew perfectly well that his style was full of 
alterations, as here, for example. 

99:22. Vandyke, Sir Anthony (1599-1641): A famous Flemish painter, 
best known for his portraits; knighted by Charles I. of England (1632), 
and made court painter. Potter, Paul (1625-1654): Noted Dutch painter 
of animals and portraits. 

26. Antic: i. e., fantastic. 

29. Pam: The knave of clubs in the game of loo. In Lamb's children's 
book, The King and Queen of Hearts, the knave is named Pambo. 
100:4. Deal-board: A thick plank, usually of fir or pine 
5. Verdant carpet: The green baize top of the card-table. 

28. Five dollar stake: i. e., a five-crown stake. 

31. Tenure: An English law term meaning the conditions upon which 
property is held. 

101:4. Piquet: In this game points are scored for carte blanche, or a 
hand of only plain cards; for point, or a hand with the strongest suit; for 
pique, or winning thirty points before one's opponent scores at all; for 
repique, or winning thirty points by the combination of cards in one's hand, 
before play begins; for capot, or taking all the tricks; and for combinations 
such as sequence, quatorze, trio. 

102:15. Size ace: Six and one. See a happy use of the language of 
dicing quoted from Lowell under Ambes-ace in Cent. Diet. 

103:28. Bridget: See the essay My Relations. 

104:4. Manes: See note, p. 47, 1. 5. 

7. Tierce, quatorze: A tierce is a sequence of three cards; a quatorze 
is fom: aces, kings, queens, laiaves, or tens, so called because it counts 14. 

16. Lenitive: A sootliing appKcation; here doubtless a poultice for his 
gout. 

18. Appliances: i. e., applications. 



NOTES 305 

VALENTINE'S DAY 

I 

f 21. Bishop Valentine: Properly speaking, St. Valentine was not a 

bishop; but Elia had good literary precedent for speaking of him thus: 
Drayton and Donne in their poems call him bishop. On the origin of 
the observances of Valentine's Day see Chambers' Book of Days. 

22. Arch-flamen of Hymen: High priest of the God of Marriage. 

105:1. Jerome, Ambrose, Cyril, Austin, Origen: Early church fathers. 

4. Bull, Parker, Whitgift: English prelates of the 16th and 17th cen- 
turies. 

9. Choristers: Choir-boys. Precentors: Choir-leaders in cathedrals and 
monastic churches. 

10. Crozier: The staff borne before a bishop on solemn occasions, 
symbolical of his office. 

13. Ycleped: i. e., called. 

106:22. Irreversible: A somewhat rare word — one of Jeremy Taylor's — 
meaning not to be set aside or annulled. 

26. Type: i. e., emblem or symbol. 

107:3. Arcadia: A region of Greece, proverbial for its rural simplicity; 
in modem literature an ideal land of piping shepherds and coy shepherd- 
esses; a symbol for peacefulness, content, and simplicity. 

6. E. B.: Edward Francis Bumey, half brother of the Admiral. See 
note on p. 96, title. 

26. Ovid: One of the chief Latin poets of the Augustan age; author of 
The Art of Love. 

27. Pyramus and Thisbe, Dido, Hero and Leander: Stock classical 
examples of constant love. The more hackneyed the allusion, the more 
suitable for the banter of this passage, of course. 

29. Cayster: A river in Lydia mentioned in the Iliad (II., 461) as aboimd- 
ing in cranes, geese, and swaijs, 

31. Iris: The goddess of the rainbow. 

A CHAPTER ON EARS 

109:6. Defoe, Daniel: The author of Robinson Crusoe, who was pilloried 
for his tract The Shortest Way with the Dissenters, but did not lose his ears. 

16. "Water parted from the sea," "In Infancy": Songs by Ame in 
Artaxerxes, Lamb's "First Play." (Lucas.) See note, p. 197, 1. 2. 

19. Mrs. S ; "Mrs. Spinkes" in the Key (see note, p. 54, 1. 10](. 

21. In his long coats: i. e., in baby-clothes, or perhaps Lamb means 
the Blue Coat of the school dress. 

25. Alice W n: See note, p. 89, 1. 11. 

30. Quavers: i. e., eighth-notes. 



306 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA 

110:3. My friend A.: "Probably William Ayrton, the musical critic." 
(Lucas.) 

20. Thorough bass, sostenuto, adagio: Lamb exaggerates his ignorance 
of music and musical terms. 

27. Baralipton: The scholastic philosophers devised a whole set of 
artificial words or names to denote the various forms of the syllogism in 
logic, of which Baralipton was one. In themselves they are perfectly 
meaningless. 

31. Gamut: The musical scale. 

111:1. Magic influences: Cf. the opening lines of Congreve's Mourning 
Bride, "Music hath charms to soothe the savage breast," etc. 

22. Enraged Musician: "A reference to Hogarth's picture with that 
title, where street noises are driving the performer mad." (Lucac.) 

112:1. "Party in a parlour," etc.: From Wordsworth's Peter Bell (first 
edition) afterwards expunged. "The lines . . . seem to have clung 
to Lamb's memory, for there is the story of his shouting the words at a 
solemn evening gathering seen through a window in passing . . . shaking 
the railings the while." (Lucas, Life, II., 14.) 

8. To pile honey: An adaptation of the classical proverb, "to pile Pelion 
on Ossa." 

12. All stops: i. e., all punctuation marks. 

22. Burton: See note on p. 85, 1.30. The quotation is from Part I, Section 
2, of the Anatomy of Melancholy, "not quite correctly copied." (Lucas.) 

27. Amabilis insania, mentis gratissimus error: Sweet rapture; most 
delightful wandering of the mind. 

113:2. Toys: In the older sense of trivial pleasures, rreital playthings 

16. Subrusticus pudor: i. e., a sort of countrified embarrassment. 

26. Nov ; Vincent Novello, the organist, composer, and musical 

publisher. • 

27. Abbey: Westminster Abbey. 

114:14. Arions: Arion was fabled to have charmed the creatures of 
the sea by his playing. Haydn, Joseph (1732-1809); Mozart, Wolfgang 
Amadeus (1756-1791); Bach, Johann Sebastian (1685-1750); Beethoven, 
Ludwig van (1770-1827): Famous German composers. Modem critical 
taste ranks the latter two the more highly. 

20. Triple tiara: The insignium of the Pope, 

24. Malleus hereticorum: Hammer of the heretics, a title given to 
St. Bernard, the preacher of the second crusade, and also to Johann Faber, 
the opponent of Luther. 

25. Heresiarch: Chief heretic. 

26. Marcion, Ebion, Cerinthus: Early imorthodox Christians. 

115:6. P. S.: This postscript was omitted from the collected edition. 
?v Leigh Hunt: See In trod., p. 2 6. The Indicator article referred to 



NOTES 307 

was a review of Lamb's Works (collected ed., 1818) in which Hunt said: 
"We believe we are taking no greater liberty with him than our motives 
will warrant, when we add that he sometimes writes in the London Magazine 
vinder the signature of Elia." 

116:8. Steelyard: The place in London where, until expelled in 1595, 
the merchants of the Hanseatic League had their headquarters. They 
had an organization like a gild and controlled most of the foreign trade of 
England. 

ALL FOOLS' DAY 

23. A speck of the motley: A streak of folly. Motley (i. e., parti-colored 
garb) was the conventional dress of court-fools. 

26. Free of the corporation: Invested with the full rights and immunities 
of the company (of fools). 

117:1. Stultus sum: I am a fool. 

5. Sparkling gooseberry: Short for gooseberry wine, the apposite- 
ness of which is obvious in the connection. Mr. Lucas piles Pelion 
on Ossa by thinking that Lamb meant to call the notion of gooseberry 
fool (a kind of conserve) to his readers' minds. 

7. Troll the catch of Amiens: Sing Amiens's song. It is snng not by 
Amiens but by Jacques. The burden, or chorus, of it is properly ducdame, 
which the hearers in the play do not understand — or the editors either, 
for some editions (one of which Lamb follows) make it over into due ad me, 
i. e., lead to me. 

16. Bauble, etc.: The court-fool often carried a bauble, or mock-sceptre, 
which generally bore a fool's head, with parti-colored hood, asses' ears, and 
little bells. Hobby: A hobby-horse. ' 

22. A salamander-gathering: The salamander was supposed to live in 
the fire. 

118:1. Disinterested sect of the Calenturists: A calenture is a feverish 
delirium supposed to be caused by hot weather, especially on shipboard. 
Elia calls the victims a disinterested sect because they obligingly throw 
themselves overboard, out of the way of their shipmates. 

3. Gebir: An 8th century Arab, the father of mediaeval chemistry, 
or alchemy. Lamb seems to have evolved the connection of Gebir with 
Babel from Landor's poem Gebir, in which the hero "tries to build 
a city, but finds his labours destroyed 'not by mortal hand' " (Hall- 
ward and Hill, quoted by Lucas). Among the many traditions of the 
origin of Masonry (which is probably an outgrowth of the mediaeval gilds) 
is one that the fraternity originated at the building of the Tower of Babel. 

5. Right hand . . . stammerers: A double allusion to Lamb's owu 
impediment and the confusion of tongues at Babel. 

7. Herodotus: "Lamb invented this reference" (Lucas). Toises: 
The toise was an old French measure of about 6 feet. 

10. Nuncheon: Midday luncheon. 



308 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA 

17. Moppet: A rag-doll, a humorous or affectionate term of address 
to a child. 

18. Mister Adams, etc.: In Fielding's novel Joseph Andrews, Adams 
is a simple, absent-minded clergyman and Mrs. Slipslop a vulgar waiting- 
woman. Odso: A modified form of an old oath. 

24. Raymund Lully (1235-1315): A Spanish philosopher, poet, and 
missionary to the Mohammedans. The appositeness of Lamb's mention 
may he in the fact that "to the end of his hfe, and after his death, his 
ignorance of Latinity was used as a reproach against him;" or it may rest 
on LuUy's idea that he had invented "a imiversal and infalUble intellectual 
method," in which he "essentially kept all the fundamental notions of the 
schoolmen, but made confusion worse confoimded by his juggling methods." 
(A. R. Marsh, in Johnson's Cyclopedia.) 

26. Duns Scotus, sumamed Doctor Subtilis: A famous scholastic 
philosopher and logician of the 13th century. "His name . . . came 
to be used as a common appellative, 'a very learned man,' and being ap- 
plied satirically . . . gave rise to dunce in its present sense." (Cent. 
Did.) 

119:1. Stephen, etc.: Foolish characters in Ben Jonson and Shakespeare. 

8. R ; "Ramsay, London Library, Ludgate Street; now extinct." 

Lamb's Key. 

14. Granville S .■ See note, p. 78, 1. 17. 

19. Armado: A fantastic braggart in Love's Labour's Lost. Quisada: 
The fantastic, chivalric knight, Don Quixote, in Cervantes' famous novel 
of that name. 

120:19. Tendre: An affectionate regard. The English noun tender 
has the same meaning in Shakespeare. 

21. That answered: May mean "that was satisfactory," or "that was 
reciprocal." 

121:1. Dotterels: The dotterel is a foolish bird; "to dorr the dotterel" 
is an old phrase meaning "to fool a simpleton." 

5. Darlings, minions, white boys: All of equivalent meaning. 

A QUAKERS' MEETING 

121: title. A Quakers' Meeting: "Lamb's connection with Quakers 
was somewhat intimate throughout his lite/." (Lucas.) His friends, the 
Lloyds and Bernard Barton (the poet), were Quakers. See also the essay 
on Imperfect Sympathies. 

122:4. Ulysses stuffed his comrades' ears with wax, and had himself 
tied to the mast, so that the Sirens' enchanting song should be of no 
effect. 

27. Carthusian: One of the rules of the Carthusian monks is tc keep 
perpetual silence. 

123:5. Zimmerman: See note, p. 87, 1. 9. 



NOTES 309 

26. Nought- cab ailing: To cabal is to plot. 

29. Council, consistory: Solemn meetings of ecclesiastical authorities 
in the Roman CathoUc and other churches. 

124:6. Fox, George (1624-1691): The founder of the Society of Friends; 
frequently imprisoned for breaking the laws against conventicles (i. e., 
unauthorized religious gatherings). Dewesbury was "one of Fox's first 
colleagues, and a famous preacher." (Lucas.) 

11. Church and presbytery: The established church and the dissenters. 
Receptacle: Gathering-place, a rare use of the word. 

16. Penn: In a letter to Coleridge (Dec, 1797), Lamb says: "I am 
just beginning to read a most capital book, good thoughts in good 
language, William Penn's 'No Cross, No Crown.' ... I love it 
[Quakerism] in the books of Penn and Woolman, but I detest the vanity 
of a man thinking he speaks by the Spirit. ..." 

17. The bail dock: A small room in the comer of the Court in the Old 
Bailey. Lamb later, in a letter, says that he finds no such words in Fox's 
journal and "must have put some other Quaker's words into his mouth." 

21. Sewel, William: His chief work is The History of the Rise, Increase, 
and Progress of the Christian People Called Quakers, originally published 
in Dutch, 1717; English translation, 1722. 

25. Wesley, John (1703-1791): The founder of Methodism. 

30. James Naylor (1618-1660): A fanatical English Puritan; rode 
into Bristol naked, in imitation of Christ's entry into Jerusalem; was 
convicted of blasphemy and recanted. 

125:11. John Woolman (1720-1772): American Quaker preacher. 
He wrote on slavery, but is best known by his Journal, published 1774. 

17. The dove: The symbol of the Holy Spirit. 

126:4. Orgasm: i. e.,- ecstasy. 

7. Malleable: i. e., capable of being changed or worked; a good Instance 
of Lamb's aptness in phrase. 

23. Jocos Risus-gue: Jests and laughter, i. e., the Levities. Loves: 
Proserpine was gathering flowers with Cupid at Enna when she was carried 
off to Hades by Dis (Pluto). 

30. Trophonius: A legendary Greek hero, who was consulted at his 
oracle in a cave in Boeotia. 

127:15. Whitsun-conferences: Yearly meetings. 

THE OLD AND THE NEW SCHOOLMASTER 

27. Ortelius: Abraham Ortelius, a Flemish geographer who published 
an atlas Theatrum Orbis Terrarum in 1570. Arrowsmith, Aaron: English 
geographer and mapmaker (1750-1823). 

128:5. Dear friend: Barron Field (1786-1846), son of the apothecary 
to Christ's Hospital: judge of the Supreme Court of New South Wales 
181G-1824. He published several volumes, among them First Fruits of 



310 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA 

Australian Poetry (reviewed by Lamb in Leigh Hunt's Examiner, Jan. . 
16, 1820), containing two poems, "Botany Bay Flowers" and "The Kan- 
garoo." See the essay on Distant Correspondents. 

6* TerrcE Incognitas: Unknown lands. 

7. Bear, Charles's Wain: The principal stars of the Great Bear com- 
pose the figure of Charles's Wain, or the Dipper. 

18. Four great monarchies: Chaldsea, Assyria, Egypt, Persia. 

21. Shepherd Kings: A name given to the Hyksos dynasty of foreign 
kingsof Egypt about 200 OB. C. My friend M.: Thomas Manning (1772- 
1840), an English mathematician and traveler. He was the first EngUsh- 
man to enter the sacred city of Lhassa in Thibet. 

129:11. Shuffling: Dodging the issue. 

16. Bishopsgate, Shacklewell: See notes, p. 45, 11. 3,7. 

130:1. Smithfield: See note, p. 68. 1. 15. 

8. Norton Folgate: A district in London, about 1^ miles northeast of 
St. Paul's. 

11. Morning avocations: i. e., his occupation in the India House. 

19. Sirens: See note on p. 122, 1. 4. What name Achilles assumed: 
According to one story, Achilles was taken as a youth by his mother, Thetis, 
to the court of King Lycomedes, where he lived disguised as a maiden among 
the King's daughters, in order that he might escape being siunmoned to join 
the expedition against Troy. Ulysses, who had gone to seek him, discovered 
him by a trick. Disguised as a pedlar, he spread out his wares and some 
weapons before the women, and then caused the signal for battle to be 
blown on the trmnpets. Achilles seized the weapons and so betrayed his 
sex, 

22. Shoreditch: A northerly continuation of Bishopsgate Street With- 
out; also the name of a borough of London. 

131:2. Kingsland: Formerly a suburb, now an outljang district of 
London, about four miles north of the Thames. 

6. North Pole Expedition: Probably Sir John Franklin's disastrous 
one of 1819. 

13. Dalston: See note, p. 45, 1. 3. 

30. The Lilys and the Linacres: William Lily (ca". 1468-1522), an Eng- 
lish grammarian, the friend of Colet, Erasmus, and More; one of the first 
teachers of Greek in England; headmaster of Colet's school in St. Paul's 
Churchyard and author of a Latin grammar which in a revised form was 
long a national text-book. Thomas Linacre (ca. 1460-1524), a noted 
Enghsh classicist and physician; projector and a founder of the College 
of Physicians in London; taught Greek to Erasmus and Sir Thomas More; 
published grammatical works. 

132:9. Flori: Florilegia, anthologies; literally, cullings of flowers. 

10. Spicilegia: Gleanings of grain. Arcadia: See note, p. 107, 1. 3. 



NOTES 311 

12 Basileus, etc.: Pamela and Philoclea are the daughters of King 
Basileus in Sir Philip Sidney's Arcadia; Mopsa and Damoetas are comic 
characters in the same. 

17 PauVs Accidence: A Latin grammar so called because John Colet 
(1467-1519), the famous humanist, who wrote it, was the founder of St. 
Paul's School. 

28. Solon (about 640-560 B. C): An Athenian reformer and lawgiver. 
Lycurgus (probably 9th century. B. C): The traditional author of the 
laws and institutions of Sparta. 

133:7. He: i. e., the pupil. 

19. Cum multis aliis: With many other things. 

20. Tractate on Education: Milton's Tractate on Education, 1644. 

2l! Hartlib, Samuel: A friend of Milton, and pamphleteer on education 
and husbandry. 

28. Mollia tempora fandi: Favorable occasions for speaking of ^he 

XT\ fi 1" t PI* 

134-14 Orrery: A mechanical representation of the solar system; 
see cut in Cent. Diet. Panopticon: A museum or exhibition room for 
novelties. 

MY RELATIONS 

138:11. Browne's Christian Morals: See note, p. 85, 1. 22. 
19 * Aunt: Sarah Lamb, sister of Ella's father; she was kno^vn to the 
children as "Aunt Hetty." See p. 65. One of iamb's poems mB^an^ 
Verse (see Introd., p. 20) was written in memory of her. She died m 1797. 
26. Thomas h Kempis: vvovevly, Thomas Hammerken (1379?-1471). 
a German mystic and ascetic, generally thought to be the author of De 
Imitatione Christi. 

28 Matins, complines: The offices, or services, for the first and the 
last respectively, of the seven "canonical hours" into which the day is 
divided by Roman CathoUc ecclesiastical practice. 

139:6. "Adventures," etc.: The book is a real one "The Wstory tells 

how the unfortunate Mons.duF . . • married against his father s 

^ll and suffered in consequence many privations. ^--If^^l^-^^^^^^l^ 
in a convent, from wliich he escaped by a jump of fifty feet. (Lucas.) 
7. Chapel on Essex Street: A Unitarian chapel (perhaps the one still 
atandin- in Milford Lane) close by the Temple, where the Lambs h.ed. 
Of c?i^°se EUa does not mean that Unitarianism actually ^e^an - E-ex 
Street and in Aunt Hetty's lifetime. It is a yery ancient hereby 
and L England Unitarian opinions took root at an f^ly penod of the 
Reformation. The philosophical writings of the 18th century tended 
fo the strengthening of the doctrine. Very Ukely the chapel m Essex 
Street had not long been opened. 

11. Never missed them: i. e., never cared if she did not get them, as is 



312 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA 

shown plainly enough in the sharing of her attentions between the Roman 
Catholic prayer-book and the Essex Street chapel 

25. Brother or sister I never had any: Lamb's parents had seven 
children, of whom John and Mary ("James" and "Bridget") were the only 
ones Charles knew. The others all died young. A daughter, Elizabeth, 
was bom in 1768, six years and more before Charles. 

29. Cousins in Hertfordshire: By the name of Bruton, his maternal 
grandmother's family. See p. 149. 

140:6. Grand climacteric: Climacteric years, or critical periods of change 
in the bodily organism, were held by some ancient pliilosophers to recur 
every seven years, by others every nine years. The "grand chmacteric" 
was the -63rd year, the multiple of 7 and 9. 

10. Yorick: A clergyman in Sterne's Tristram Shandy, in whose guise 
Sterne gives us Ms own picture; hence the name is often appUed to Sterne 
himself. 

17. Phlegm . . . sanguine: Old-fashioned medicine distinguished 
various complexions, temperaments, etc , named (according as one 
or another of the humors had predominance in the body), phlegmatic, 
melancholic, choleric, sanguine. 

141:4. Dominichino, Domenico Zampieri (1581-1641): An Italian 
painter. His most famous picture is "The Communion of St. Jerome," 
in the Vatican. The proper form is Domenichino. 

10. Charles of Sweden: Charles XII. (1682-1718), a celebrated military 
leader. 

17. Cham: An old form of Khan, i. e., sovereign. The Grand Khan 
of Tartary, described by the celebrated Venetian traveler, Marco Polo 
(1254-1324), in his Travels, was Kublai Khan (the "Kubla Khan" of 
Coleridge's poem), the founder of the Mongol dynasty of China. 

28. John Murray's Street: John Murray, the great publisher and friend 
of literary men (especially Byron, who has immortalized him), had his 
oflQce in Albemarle Street. 

143:5. Claude, Lorrain (1600-1682): Celebrated French landscape 
painter. Hobbima, Meyndert (1638-1709): Dutch landscape painter. 
Properly Hobbema. 

6. Christie's: A well-known auction-room in Pall Mall, London, estab- 
lished by James Christie (1730-1803), the friend of Garrick, Gainsborough, 
and Reynolds; continued by his son, James Christie (1773-1831), known 
also as an antiquary and art critic; now Christie, Manson & Woods. "In 
Christie's sale catalogues may be traced the history of fine-art taste in 
England for over a century." 

7. Gauds: Playthings, toys, trifles. 

13. Pall Mall: Formerly a fashionable suburban promenade, now a 
handsome street in the West End, the center of London club hfe. 

29. Raphael, Sanzio (1483-1520):A celebrated Itahan painter. Among 



NOTES 313 

his works are the well-known "Sistine Madonna" and "The Madonna of 
the Chair." 

144:1. Carracci, Annibale (1560-1609): An Italian painter, pupil of 
his cousin, Ludovico. 

4. Giordano, Lucca (1632-1705): An Italian painter, celebrated for 
his swiftness of execution. Maratti, Carlo (1625-1713) : An ItaUan painter, 
chiefly of religious subjects. 

146:3. Apostle to the brute kind, etc.: John Lamb published a pamphlet 
(1810) on the prevention of cruelty to animals, containing a huge sentence 
on the raanner of cooking eels. A propos. Lamb wrote in a letter, "Don't 
show it [the pamphlet] to Mrs. Collier, for I remember she makes excellent 
eel soup." 

9, Clarkson, Thomas (1760-1846): EngUsh aboUtionist and pam- 
phleteer. He wrote a History of the Abolition of the Slave Trade (1808). 

MACKERY END IN HERTFORDSHIRE 

146: title. Machery End: "Lamb's first visit there must have been 
when he was only a little boy, somewhere about 1780." (Lucas.) The 
house is still standing. 

15. Rash king's offspring: Jephthah's daughter; see Judges, xi, 37, 38. 

147:12. Religio Medici: See note, p. 85, 1. 22. 

18. Margaret Newcastle: See note, p. 86, 1. 22. 

21. Freethinkers, etc.: Among them Coleridge, Hazlitt, Leigh Hunt, 
Wilham Godwin. 

149:7. Less known relations: Lamb's maternal grandmother, Mary 
Field (born Bruton), was in charge of Blakesware House, the Plumers' 
Hertfordshire place, from 1778 till her death in 1792. 

8. Corn country: i. e., grain-growing country. 

20. My grandmother: See Dream Children, p. 201. 

31. St. Albans: A city in Hertfordshire, twenty miles northwest of 
London. 

151:6. Females: See note, p. 281, 1. 24. 

152:8. B. F.: See note, p. 128, 1. 5. 

11. Words written in lemon: Salts of lemon are used in preparing cer- 
tain of the so-called 'sympathetic' inks. 

IMPERFECT SYMPATHIES 

152: title. Imperfect sympathies: In the London Magazine the title 
was Jews, Quakers, Scotchmen, and Other Imperfect Sympathies. ■ 

24. Notional and conjectural essences: Abstract qualities of things 
conceived as having ideal existence. Concretions: The embodiments of 
these ideal essences in material form. 



314 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA 

153:10. Apathies: "In the London Magazine Lamb had written 
'dispathles.' " (Lucas.) 

155:1. His Minerva is born in panoply: i. e., his thoughts are brought 
forth fully developed and equipped. Minerva, the goddess of leamin- was 
said to have sprung in full armor from the head of Jove. 

11. True touch: i. e., genuine gold; the touch is the stamp applied by 
the Goldsmith's Company to a piece of plate testifying to its fineness 
(Cent. Diet.) 

156:1. John Bundle: See note, p. 86, 1. 1. 

8. Leonardo da Vinci: Famous Italian painter, architect, sculptor 
scientist, mechanician, and musician (1452-1519). Among his best known 
pictures are "The Last Supper," "The Virgin of the Eocks," "St John 
the Baptist," "Mona Lisa." 

25. Burns: In a letter Lamb calls Burns "a favorite Bardie." 

31. Swift, Jonathan (1667-1745): Celebrated satirist and pamphleteer 
author of Gulliver's Travels. 

157:12. Thomson, James (1700-1748): English poet (of Scotch birth), 
author of The Seasons and The Castle of Indolence. Smollett, Tobias George 
(1721-1771): Of Scotch birth, a satirist, historian, and humorous novelist 
Among his novels are Roderick Random (1748), Peregrine Pickle (1751)* 
Humphrey Clinker (1771). He translated Don Quixote and continued David 
Hume's History of England. In Roderick Rqndom he exhibits Rory (i. e., 
Roderick) and Strap, his companion, as the greenest of Scotch greenhomsi 
when they first arrive in London. 

21. Stonehenge: The wonderful ruins of what is supposed to have been 
a Druid temple, on Salisbury Plain. Sir Norman Lockyer, the English 
astronomer, has recently made a cbmputation, based on the orientation 
of the altar, and declares that the ruins must have been erected more than 
six thousand years before Christ. Nonage: Time of fife before a person 
comes of age. 

25. The story of Hugh of Lincoln: A mediaeval legend of the murder 
of a nttle boy by the Jews in Lincoln. There is an old ballad on the sub- 
ject, and Chaucer has told a similar story in The Prioress's Tale. "The 
Jew's House" is still shown at Lincoln. 

158:7. On 'Change: i. e., in business (literally, on the stock exchange). 
12. Congeeing: Bowing ceremoniously. 
16. Keck: To be nauseated. 

19. I like fish or flesh: Probably Lamb had in mind the proverbial 
" 'Tis neither flesh, fish, fowl, nor good red herring." 

21. B ; "Braham, now a Xtian," Lamb's Key. John Brahani 

(1774-1856), an English tenor singer (of Jewish birth), and composer of 
popular songs. 

159:3. As Kemhle delivered dialogue: See p. 235. 



NOTES 315 

16. i^wKer, Thomas (1608-1661): An eminent English divine and writer, 
author of The History of the Holy War (1639), The Holy State and the 
Profane State (1642), The History of the Worthies of England (1662), and ^ 
Other works. 

160:4. Evelyn, John (1620-1706): Author of a celebrated diary and 
of discourses on political subjects and horticulture. 

28. Laic-truth: i. e., lay-truth; ordinary or common truth. 

161:28. I was travelling, etc.: Lamb confessed to his Quaker friend, 
Bernard Barton, that this was a second-hand story. 

30. To bait: To feed our horses. Andover: A town in Hampshire. 

162:29. Soporific: Strictly a sleeping-potion. 

30. Exeter: A city in Devonshire, a hundred miles or so west of Andover. 

THE OLD BENCHERS OF THE INNER TEMPLE 

163:2. The Temple: This great and ancient institution, comprising 
both the Inner and the Middle Temple, is one of the four great Inns of 
Court. The network of lanes, courts, gardens, chambers, buildings, and 
terraces that compose its visible habitation, lies between Fleet Street and 
the Thames. Here many lawyers have their lodgings and offices. "These 
Inns are colleges for the study of law, and possess the privilege of calling to 
the Bar. Each is governed by its older members, who are termed fienc/iers. 
. . • The Temple, formerly a lodge of the Knights Templar 
became Crown property on the dissolution of the order in 1313 [and later] 
came into the possession of the Knights of St. John, who, in 1846, leased it 
to the students of common law. From that time . . . the group ol 
buildings . . . has continued to be a school of law. . . . In 1609 
it was declared by royal decree the free hereditary property of the Corpora^ 
tions of the Inner and Middle Temple. . . . The Inner Temple is so 
called from its position within the precincts of 'the City' ; the Middle Temple^ 
. fromitssituationbetween the Inner and the Outer Temple [the last 
no longer exists]. The Inner and the Middle Temple possess in common the 
Temple Church, St. Mary's. . . . The fine Gothic hall of the Middle 
Temple was built in 1572. . . . Shakespeare's Tw>eV^/i 7Viff/i< was acted 
in this hall during the dramatist's lifetime. . . . The new InneF 
Temple Hall was opened in 1870. . . . Oliver Goldsmith Uved and 
died on the second floor of 2 Brick Court, Middle Temple Lane; Blackstone, 
the famous commentator on the law of England, lived in the rooms beloT^ 
him; and Dr. Samuel Johnson occupied apartments in Inner Temple Lane." 
(Baedeker's London.) 

21. Albeit of Paper hight: i. e., although called Paper. At one side of the 
Temple Gardens stand the Paper Buildings. Mr. Lucas thinks that Lamt 
manufactured the quotation. Across the Gardens stand Harcourt Build- 
ings (probably named after Simon Harcourt, lord-chancellor in 1713), 
and between Paper Buildings and Harcourt Buildings is Crown OflQc(k 
Row, forming the northern side of the enclosure. 



316 THE ESSAYS OF ELI A 

24. Kindly engendure: i. e., birth; the word should properly be en- 
/endrure; kindly may have its old meaning of natural. 

27. Just weaned from her Twickenham, Naiades: The Naiads were 
water-nymphs. Twickenham, where the poet Pope hved, is a suburban 
village up stream from London, about 11§ miles southwest of the city. 
The great docks and basins of London are a little down stream from the 
Temple, the Port of London extending from London Bridge to a point 6^ 
miles down the river. 

164:13. Nice: Delicate. M 

27. Horologe: Literally, hour-teller. 

165:4. Marvell, Andrew (1621-1678): English poet. Lamb often 
quotes him. Lincoln's Inn: One of the four Inns of Court (see note on 
p. 163, 1. 2) in Chancery Lane, a Uttle north of the Temple. 

166:14. They are awakening images to them at least: This ambiguous 
sentence may mean that the sculptures on the fountains at any rate awaken 
the imagination of children. 

26. Gothic: Formerly very frequent in the transferred sense of rude, 
grotesque, barbarous. Gothicised, three lines below, must be a play 
on the two senses of Gothic. 

167:1. Winged horse: "Concerning the winged horse, the badge of the 
Inner Temple, Mrs. E. T. Cook, in her Highways and Byways of London, 
1902, has this interesting passage: 'This winged horse has a curious 
history, for, when the horse was originally chosen as an emblem, he had no 
wings, but was ridden by two men at once to indicate the self-chosen 
poverty of the brotherhood [of the Templars] ; in lapse of years the figures 
of the men became worn and abraded, and when restored were mistaken 
for wings. " (Lucas.) 

167:12. Sided: Pushed aside. 

15. J II: Joseph Jekyll, a friend of Lamb's, known as a wit. 

17. Thomas Coventry (1713-1797): Became a Bencher in 1766, died 
in Serjeants' Inn, and was buried in the Temple Church. He was a sub- 
governor of the South- Sea House, and in 1782 gave £10,000 of South Sea 
stock to Christ's Hospital. (Lucas.; 

168:1. Dark rappee: i. e., the color of rappee snuff. 

5. Samuel Salt: Became Bencher in 1782, lived at 2 Crown Office Kow, 
died 1792, and was buried in the Temple Church. He was connected by 
marriage with Thomas Coventry, and was a governor of the South-Sea 
House. Lamb's father was Salt's confidential clerk and personal servant. 
Mrs. Lamb was his housekeeper. Salt got Lamb into Christ's Hospital 
and probably arranged John Lamb's appointment to the South-Sea House. 
(Lucas.) 

18. Lovel: Under this name Lamb describes his father, John Lamb the 
elder. 

32. Miss Blandy: Hanged April 6, 1752, for having poisoned her father. 



I 



NOTES 317 

23 Susan P : Lamb's Key gives Susan Peirson [sic], sister of Peter 

Pierson. spoken of on p. 172. B d Row: Probably Bedford Row. 

.Holborn, near Gray's Inn. 

170:1. Cadet: i. e., younger son. 
7. Moidore: An obsolete Portuguese gold coin. 

8 Serjeants' Inn: There are two Serjeants' Inns, one in Fleet Street, 
one' in Chancery Lane. They were once set apart for the lodgings and 
chambers of the Serjeants at law, i. e., lawyers of high rank. No sergeants 
have been created since 1868. 

16. Hie currus, etc.: Here were his chariot and his arms. 
19*. Elwes, John (1714-1789): Noted English miser, well-educated, 
but with extraordinary vagaries. 

171-7 ''Flapper''- In Swift's Gulliver's Travels the wise men of Laputa 
were attended by servants called flappers, whose business it was to awake 
their masters from their meditations and revery. 
26. Garrick: See note, p. 76, footnote. 

29. Prior, Matthew (1664-1721): EngUsh poet and diplomatist 
renowned for light verse. 

172:5. Brother of the angle: Fisherman. 
6. Izaak Walton: See note, p. 85, 1. 31. 

12. Bayes: A character in Buckingham's farce The Rehearsal, intended 
to ridicule Dryden. 

15. . Little hoy from Lincoln: Lamb speaks again, in Poor Relati6ns 
{Last Essays), of his father's memories of Lmcoln. 

26 Peter Pierson: Became Bencher in 1800, died 1808, and was buried 
in the Temple Church. He and John Lamb, Junior, were sureties for 
Lamb when he entered the East India HoTise. (Lucas.) 

173-3. Our great philanthropist: Mr. Lucas says probably John Howard. 
Howard was celebrated for his exertions in behalf of prison reform. 

6. Daines Barrington: Bencher 1777, buried in the Temple Church. 
He inspired Gilbert White's Natural History of Sdborne (1789), many 
of the letters in which are addressed to him. (Lucas.) 

15. Barton, Thomas: Bencher 1775, died 1791. (Lucas.) Negation: 
Nonentity. 

29. Figure: As of a dance. 

174:5. Jackson, Richard: Bencher 1770, died 1787. Dr. Johnson said 
it was blasphemous to caU him "omniscient." (Lucas.) 

8. Friar Bacon: Roger Bacon (ca. 1214-1294), celebrated EngUsh 
philosopher, renowned for his learning; he was incited by Pope Clement 
IV to write a general treatise on the sciences (the Opus Majus). A popu- 
lar' legend which grew up about him in the Middle Ages represented hxm 
as a magician and formed the basis of Greene's play Friar Bacon and 
Friar Bungay. 



318 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA 

11. Edge bone: The spelling aitch bone is the more usual; see aitch bone 
in Cent. Diet. ' 

27. Michael Angela (1475-1564): A famous Italian sculptor, painter, 
architect, and poet. His great horned "Moses" is in the church of San 
Pietro in Vincoli in Kome. 

28. Baron Maseres: Francis Maseres (1731-1824). An English mathe- 
matician, historian, and reformer; attorney-general of Quebec, 1766-69; 
Bencher, 1774; cursitor baron of the exchequer, 1773-1824. He wore a 
three-cornered hat and ruffles till his death. 

175:13. Goshen: See note, p. 75, 1. 10. 

21. R. N.: Randal Norris. See note, p. 64, 1. 16. 

176:4. Incondite: Crude, a favorite word of Lamb's. 

10. Gentleman's: In the essay A Deathbed printed in the first edition 
of the Last Essays of Elia, which describes Norris's death. Lamb wrote: 
"In him I seem to have lost the old plainness of manners and singleness 
of heart. Lettered he was not; his reading scarcely exceeded the obituary 
of the old Gentleman's Magazine, to which he has never failed of having 
recourse for these last fifty years. Yet there was the pride of literature 
about him from that slender perusal." 

12, Urban: Sylvanus Urban was the hereditary pseudonym of the 
editor of The Gentleman' s Magazine. 

20. Hooker: See note, p. 78, 1. 20. Selden: See note, p. 57, 1. 17. 

22. Quiristers: Same as choristers. 

26. Reductive of juvenescent emotions: i. e., bringing back emotions 
of youth, or emotions that make one young again. The phrase is a good 
example of the brevity and delicate humor that Lamb often gains by the 
use of Latin words. 

WITCHES AND OTHER NIGHT FEARS 
177:8. Decency: Appropriateness, decorum. 

12. Wasting inwardly: It was a popular superstition that one could 
bring harm to one's enemies by incantations performed over wax figures 
representing them. Lamb speaks of the same thing and of the blasting of 
com in his story of The Witch Aunt in Mrs. Leicester's School. Corn was 
lodged: Standing grain was beaten flat. 

15. Spits and kettles only: i. e., of their OAvn accord; of themselves. 

22. Indigent eld: Needy old age. 

24. Anile: Belonging to old women. ' 

178:11. Hcadborough: Chief of the district. 

18. Guyon: Sir Guyon, the personification of Temperance in Spenser's 
Faerie Queene, is taken by the fiend Mammon to the lower regions and 
tempted by the offer of golden fruit, which he refuses. Assay: A taste, 
from the old use of the word meaning the tasting, or trying "of food intended 
for another, as a King, before presenting it." {Cent. Diet.) 



NOTES 319 

26. History of the Bible: Thomas Stackhouse's New History of 
tht Holy Bible from the Beginning of the World to the Establishment of Chris- 
tianity (1737). 

179:16. Bane: Not common in the sense of poison except in com- 
pounds such as henbane, ratsbane. 

27. Long-coats: Baby-clothes. 

182:1. Little T. H.: Leigh Hunt's son, Thornton Hunt. Southey, a 
strict churchman and pietist, in his article on The Progress of Infidelity, 
(see Introd., p. 2 7) took occasion tc object to Elia's "wanting a sounder 
religious feeling," this passage being his chief text. He must have been 
desirous of finding fault with Lamb and Leigh Hunt, to have made so 
innocent a remark bear the construction which, with the help of his knowl- 
edge of Hunt's liberal views, he put upon it. 

6. Ab extra: From without. 

11. Gorgons, Hydras, Chimoeras: Monsters of Greek mythology. 
The Gorgon's head is represented with snakes for hair; the Hydra had nine 
heads; the Chimaera was a fire-breathing monster part lion, part goat, 
part dragon. 

12. Celceno: One of the Harpies, ravenous and filthy winged creatures 
having bodies like a woman, wings and claws of a bird of prey, and 
faces pale with hunger. See p. 188, 1. 9. 

24. Devils in Dante: In the first part, Hell (Inferno), of Dante Alighieri's 
great poem. The Divine Comedy. 

183:9. Ante-mundane condition: State of being before coming into this 
world. 

27. Fells: Hills. 

31. Helvellyn: A mountain in the Lake District, in Cumberland. 
184:4. Kubla Khan: See note, p. 141, 1. 17. 

7. Barry Cornwall: Pseudonym of-Bryan Waller Procter (1787-1874), 
English poet and author. He wrote a memoir of Lamb (1866). Tritons: 
Subordinate sea-deities. Nereids: Sea-nymphs. 

14. Spectra: i. e., spectres, phantoms. Conchs: Horns made of conch 
shells. 

21. Ino Leucothea: A Greek sea-nymph. 

28. Lambeth Palace: The London residence of the Archbishops of Can- 
terbury, on the right (or Surrey) bank of the Thames about a mile above 
the Temple. From Lambeth Palace Lambeth Road runs east past the 

I Bethlehem Lunatic Asylum ("Bedlam") near by. (See note, p. 71, 1. 11.) 
I Lamb suggests that after such a dream he was in a good way to become a 
lunatic. 

30. Quantum: Quantity. 

GEACE BEFORE MEAT 
185: title. Grace before meat: In his Letter to Southey protesting 
against Southey's criticisms of his essays (see note, p. 182, 1. 1.), Lamb 



320 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA 

suggests that Southey may have had this essay in mind. He says, "Rightly 
taken, sir, that paper was not against graces, but want of grace; not 
against the ceremony, but the carelessness and slovenliness so often ob- 
served in the performance of it." 

186:3. Manducation: Eating. 

8. Liturgy now compiling . . . Christians: In plain prose. Lamb 
means that as religious thinking grows wiser and more tolerant, some form 
of worship (liturgy) may be developed by mankind {Homo Humanus, 
literally, human man) that will recognize the spiritual value of things 
not yet generally regarded as religious, such as philosophy and poetry. 
Creature comforts and material enjoyments would be no more frowned 
upon by such religion than they were in the Abbey of Th6leme, founded 
by Gargantua, the hero of Rabelais's story (Book I., chap. 52-57), where 
everything was arranged to make life as pleasant as possible. 

12. Unprovocative: Not tending to stimulate appetite. 

32. Rarus hospes: An infrequent guest. 

187:4. Orgasm: Ecstasy. 
^ 188:7. Virgil knew: In the Aeneid (Bk. III.) when Aeneas and his 
companions come to the Harpies' islands, they kill the flocks for a feast, 
but the Harpies snatch the food from before their faces. At length they 
beat ofif the Harpies, whose queen, Celaeno, curses them and prophesiesj 
famine for them. 

189:2. Gris-amber: Ambergris, a precious fragrant substance, got from 
the sperm whale. 

5. Cates: See note p. 65, 1. 14. 

10. Gaudy day: See note p. 57, 1. 2. 

11. Heliogahalus: An emperor of Rome, a type of debauchery and 
luxury. 

16. He that disturbed him: i. e., the Tempter. 

190:31. Unctuous morsels: Lamb writes in a letter to Charles Cham 
bers: "I like you for hking hare. I esteem you for disrelishing minced 
veal. Liking is too cold a word. I love you for your noble attachment 
to the fat unctuous pieces of deer's flesh and the green unspeakable o 
turtle." In the same letter occurs the word sapor, which appears in the 
Dissertation upon Roast Pig (see p. 267). (Compare sapidless, p. 191, 1. 15. 

191:16. Beside my tenour: Out of my hmnor. 

17. Author of the Rambler: Dr. Samuel Johnson. 

28. Dagon: A deity mentioned in the Old Testament as the nationa 
god of the Philistines, thought to have been represented as half man an< 
half flsh. See I. Samud, v, 4, marginal reading. 

32. Chartreuse, La Grande: A Carthusian monastery near Grenoble i: 
France. 

192:6. Hog's Norton: "An old proverb runs: 'I think thou wast bor 



NOTES 321 

at Hogg's Norton, where piggs play upon the organs.' " (Lucas.) See the 
quotation under organ def. 2 In Cent. Diet., also organy, origan. 

28. Sectaries: Adherents of a rehgious sect, hence dissenters. 

193:3. Lucian, of Samosata (ca. 120-200 A. D.): Celebrated Greek 
satirist and humorist. "He was a free-thinker, attacking with pungent 
satire the rehgious beliefs of his time." 

7. Flamens: Priests. 

13. C. V. L.: Charles Valentine Le Grice. See p. 79. 

16. Our old form at school: Mr. Lucas gives the grace said before meat 
at Christ's Hospital in Lamb's day: "Give us thankful hearts, O Lord God, 
for the table thou hast spread for us. Bless thy good creatures to our use 
and us to thy service, for Jesus Christ his sake. Amen." Creature in old 
usage means any created thing, as here. Cf. I. Timothy, iv, 4; and 
Romans, viii, 39. 

21. Non tunc illis erat locus: Those things were out of place. 
30. Horresco refer ens: I shudder to think of it. 

MY FIRST PLAY 
,t 194:1. Cross Court: Does not now appear on the map of London. 
J; 5. Old Drury: Drury Lane Theatre, one of the principal theatres of 
- London. It 'was opened 1663; rebuilt by Sir Christopher Wren 1674 

This, "Garrick's Drury," was superseded by a new building (1794), which 
B burned 1809 and was replaced by the present theatre, built 1812. 

15. My Godfather F .• "The British Directory for 1793 gives him as 

Francis Field, oilman, 62 High Holborn." (Lucas.) Lamb's Key gives 

"Field," but the proper spelling seems to be "Fielde." 
)i 17. Holborn: A district and street in the central part of London. 

19. John Palmer: See pp. 216-7. 
23. Sheridan: See note, p. 81, 1. 7. 

a 25. Maria Linley: Ehza Ann Linley, English soprano singer in oratorio 

Ml of Bath, whence she eloped to France with Sheridan, 1772. 

« 195:10. Ciceronian: Distinguished by elaborate polish of diction. 

\ 16. Seneca, Lucius Annaeus (4 B. C.-65 A. D.): A celebrated Roman 

.. Stoic philosopher and tragic dramatist. Varro, Marcus Terentius (116-27 

. B. C.) : Celebrated as. the most learned of Roman scholars. 

20. St. Andrew's: One of the 108 parishes of the City of London proper. 
^ ^^ 27. Landed property: A plot of land, with a thatched cottage (now called 

ii' "Button Snap") and a bam, conveyed to Lamb, not strictly by "testa- 
flimentary beneficence" from Francis Fielde, but from his widow, in 1812 
'In 1815 Lamb conveyed the property (by a deed witnessed by WiUiani 
jj Hazhtt) to Thomas Greg, Jr. (Lucas.) 

196:3. Centre: According to ancient astronomy, the fixed middle point 
,(^of the universe, supposed to be the central point of the earth. 



322 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA 

4. Agrarian: An agrarian law, %. e., a measure affecting the legal tenure 
of land, especially one designed to effect the equal or luiiforni ownership 
of land. (Rare as a noun.) 

6. Pit orders: Passes. 

11. Nonpareils: "A kind of apple" {Johnson's Dictionary). In Lamb's 
mock biography of John Liston, the actor, pubUshed in 1825, he pretends 
to quote a passage from a Puritan pamphlet against the stage: "Where, as 
I am told, the custom is commonly to mumble (between the acts) apples, 
not ambiguously derived from that pernicious Pippin" — i. e., Eve's apple. 

19. Rowe, Nicholas (1674-1718): An English dramatist, appointed poet 
laureate 1714. His edition of Shakespeare was published 1709. 

29. "Fair Auroras": The phrase occurs in the first song of Artaxerxes. 
(Lucas.) 

197:2. Artaxerxes: An opera by Thomas Ame, produced first in 1762. 
The historical Artaxerxes was a King of Persia, 465-425 B. C. See Ezra 
iv, vi, vii, and Daniel vi. Persepolis was one of the capitals of the Persian 
empire. 

15. Harlequin's Invasion: A pantomime by Garrick. Mr. Lucas says 
the only time in 1780-2 that this was given with Artaxerxes was Dec. 1, 
1780, the probable date of Lamb's first visit to the theatre. Harlequin is 
a stock figure in pantomime, a glutton, clown, and trickster, usually 
clothed in variegated colors and armed with a sword of lath. His part 
irequently needs to be acted by an acrobat. . 

17. Beldams: Old women. 

20. St. Denys: The apostle to the Gauls and the patron saint of France; 
the legend says that when he was beheaded (Paris, 272 A. D.) he got up 
and carried away his head in his hands. 

21. Lady of the Manor: In this and the next paragraph Lamb's memory 
probably deceived him, as Mr. Lucas points out. His second play was 
probably The Lord of the Manor, by Gen. Burgoyne, followed bj^ Robinson 
Crusoe, and his third, The Way of the World, by Wycherley, followed by 
Lun's Ghost. 

25. Rich, John (1692-1721): An English pantomimist, called "the 
Father of Harlequins." He played under the name of Lun. 

27. Lud: A mythical king of Britain, a sort of Celtic Zeus, associated 
by tradition with London (cf. the name Ludgate Hill). 

29. Motley: See note, p. 116, 1. 23. 

198:7. Pantaloonery: Buffoonery. Pantaloon is a conventional clown- 
type in pantomime, like Harlequin. 

12. Round Church: One of the parts of St. Mary's Church, in the Temple, 
completed in 1185. The other part, the choir, was added in 1240. "The 
lawyers used formerly to receive their clients in the Rotmd Church, each 
occupying his particular post like merchants 'on change.' The incumbent 
of the Temple Church is called the Master of the Temple." (Baedeker's 



NOTES 323 

'iLondon.) Canon Ainger, the biographer and editor of Lamb, was Master 

Sfrom 1894 till his death. 

199:17. Mrs. Siddons: Sarah (Kemble) Siddons (1755-1831), a cele- 
brated English tragic actress, sister of Jolin and Charles Kemble. "la 

11782 she appeared at Drury Lane with extraordinary success as Isabella 
in Southerne's Fatal Marriage." (Cent. Diet.) Her greatest part was 

"I Lady Macbeth. One of Lamb's sonnets, published with Coleridge's Poems 

\(see Introd., p. 20), was addressed to her. 



DREAM -CHILDEEN: A REVERIE 



24. My little ones: The names of the Dream-Children, John and Alice,, 
^'I'were endeared to Lamb by affectionate remembrance. His brother John 
died in October, 1821; Alice was the name under which he recalled Anr». 
,S^ Simmons, the love of his boyhood days in Hertfordshire. 
>' 25. Great-grandmother Field: See p. 149. 

" 26. Norfolk: The real place was Blakesware, in Hertfordshire, of which 
Lamb wrote a further description in his essay Blakesmoor in H shire. 

'!; (Last Essays.) In that paper he speaks of "the bright yellow H shira^ 

hair, and eye of watchet hue — so like my Alice!" 

200:24. Old Tombs: In the Last Essays is one on the Tombs in the Abbeif.- 
Psaltery: unusual in the sense of Psalter, i. e., the Psalms as set forth 

\ in the Prayer Book. 

201:24. The twelve Caesars: "Mine, too, Blakesmoor was thy noble 

Marble Hall, with its mosaic pavements and its Twelve Caesars — stately 

ei busts in marble — ^ranged round: of whose countenances, young reader of 

Ii( faces as I was, the frowning beauty of Nero, I remember, had most of my 

wonder; but the mild Galba had my love." {Blakesmoor in H shire, in. 

fj the Last Essays.) 

js 202:24. John L ; See My Relations, p. 140ff. Lamb published 

ii Dream- Children in January, 1822; John Lamb had died Oct. 26, 1821, 
i leaving all he possessed to his brother Charles. 

203:6. He became lame-footed, too: In a letter to Coleridge (1796) Lamb 
ds says: "We have just learned that my poor brother has had a sad accident; 
f a large stone . . . has bruised his leg in a most shocking manner." 

J 22. Took off his limb: Mr. Lucas doubts "if the leg were really am- 
1 putated." 

29. Alice W n: See note, p. 89, 1. 11. 

f 204:9. Bartrum: It is a fact that Ann Simmons married a man named 

I Bartrimi or Bartram. (Lucas.) 

J 12. Lethe: In Greek mythology, the river of oblivion in Hades, the 

I I underworld. 

) ON SOME OF THE OLD ACTORS 

r 

, 204: Title. The Old Actors: "In February, 1822, Lamb began a serieisr 

of three articles in The London Magazine on 'The Old Actors.' The second 



324 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA 

was printed in April and the third in October. ... In reprinting them 
he rearranged them into the essays 'On Some of the Old Actors,' 
'On the Artificial Comedy of the Last Century,' and 'On the Acting of 
Munden.' " (Lucas.) The first fom- paragraphs of this essay were added 
in the collected edition; a few omissions were made; and the paragraphs 
from "If few can remember Dodd" (p. 213), down to "O La! O La! 
Bobby!" (p. 216) were taken from the third paper. 

22. Drury Lane Theatre: See note, p. 194, 1. 5. 

29. Whitfield, etc.: Mr. Lucas says that Whitfield, Packer, Benson (who 
was also a playwright), Burton, and PhUlimore were actors of small parts 
and utiUty men at Drury Lane and Covent Garden. "Barrymore was of 
higher quality." 

205:7. Mrs. Jordan was the stage name of Dorothy Bland, an Irish 
actress excelling in comedy. 

12. Nells and Hoydens: Lamb may likely enough have had particular 
plays in mind, but uses the names to mean boisterous parts generaUy. 

13. Melting eye: Melting, in the sense of tender, soft, is often applied 
in Shakespeare to eyes and tears. In the eighteenth century it was in 
vogue in the sense of affecting, moving. 

206:5. Mrs. Powel [Powell]: An actress previously known as Mrs. 
Farmer* subsequently as Mrs. Renaud, long connected with Drury Lane 
and Covent Garden Theatres. "Her forte lay in the intenser roles of 
tragedy." 

10. Conceits: Ingenious, witty, or fantastic thoughts or fancies. 

20. Of all the actors: Here began the original London Magazine essay. 

21. Bensley, Robert: Retired from Drury Lane in 1796. Others con- 
firm Lamb's judgment of his Malvolio; "but otherwise he is not the subject 
of much praise." (Lucas.) 

207*7 Nuncios: Messengers; but there is a special aptness in the use 
of the word from its dignified use as the title of the Papal diplomatic agents. 

24. Mine Ancient: lago is Othello's ancient, i.e., ensign, or flag- 
lieutenant. 

208:7. Baddeley, Robert: "In his wfil he left the . . . interest of 
£100 to provide wine and cake for the actors of Drury Lane Theatre on 
Twelfth Night. This is still done." (Cent. Diet.) Parsons, Wilham: 
A successful actor; noted for his roles of old men. 

15. Lambert, John (1619-1683): An English general of the Parila- 
mentary armies in the Civil War. of great civil and military influence. 

16 Lady Fairfax: Both the second and the third Baron Fairfax were 
Parliamentary leaders in the CivU War. The sixth Baron Fairfax emigrated 
to Virginia and became a friend of Washington. 

209:17. At the buttery hatch: At the pantry door. 

210:16. Hero of La Mancha: Don Quixote. 

30. To taste manna: A familiar metaphor for any delicious entertain- 



NOTES 325 

ment of body or mind. To mate Hyperion: To equal or emulate Hyperion, 
the sun-god; i. e., to scale the very heaven itself. 

211:11. Dodd, James William: A memlber of Garrick's company, 
especially successful as Aguecheek {Tweljth Night) and Drugger {The 
Alchemist). 

12. Lovegrove, William (1778-1816): An English comedian, a member 
of the Drury Lane Company. 

16. In puris naturalibus: i. c, naked, as it was bom, in mere natural 
state or guise. 

212:1. Gray's Inn: One of the four great Inns of Court (see note on 
p. 163, 1. 2) in Holborn. It formerly paid ground-rent to the Lords Gray 
of Wilton; has existed as a school of law since 1371; "during the 17th 
century the garden, in which a number of trees were planted by Lord 
Bacon, was a fashionable promenade." (Baedeker's London.) The Veru- 
1am Buildings are named in honor of Bacon, the most eminent of former 
members of Gray's Inn. 

4. Crankles: Angles, bends; perhaps an echo of I. Henry IV., iii, 1, 98. 

10. Bacon, Francis (1561-1626): Celebrated English philosopher, 
jurist, and statesman; lord chancellor (1618-1621). 

30ff. Foppington, Tattle, Backbite, Acres, Fribble: Characters in Van- 
brugh's Relapse, Congreye's Love for Love, Sheridan's School for Scandal, 
Sheridan's Rivals, and Garrick's Miss in her Teens, respectively. 

213:26. "Put on the weeds of Dominic'': Milton alludes to the practice 
of taking monastic vows at the approach of death as a means of salvation. 
The Dominicans are known as Black Friars, from their black mantles. 

214:3. Suett, Richard (1755-1805): His i>arts were mainly confined 
to Shakespearian clowns and other characters principally belonging to low 
comedy. His reputation rests chiefly on Lamb's praise; though Hazlitft 
and Leigh Hunt praised him, too. Mr. Lucas says that Suett had been a 
choir-boy at Westminster, not at St. Paul's. 

6. Nonage: See note, p. 157, 1. 21. 

28. Albe: In modem spelling, alb; one of the vestments of a priest. 

215:1. Secularization: A technical word meaning release from the 
vows or rule of a monastic order. 

9. He was known, like Puck, etc.: In A Midsummer Night's Dream, 
Puck, or Robin Goodfellow, cries "Ho, ho, ho!" to Demetrius, but does 
not let Demetrius see him. 

16. Matthews, Charles (1776-1835); An English comedian, especially 
successful as a mimic. 

18. Richer than the cuckoo — which also has but two syllables at 
command. 

23. Unmixed existence: His simple, carefree life. 

216:4. Deep as the centre: The center of the earth, conceived (in the 
old Ptolemaic astronomy) as the center of the universe. Cf. Hamlet, ii, 2, 159. 



326 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA 

7. Bannister, John (1760-1836): A noted English comedian. 

16. Vesta: The virgin goddess of the hearth, one of the primitive 
deities of the ancient Romans. 

21. Palmer, Robert (1757-1805): An actor, brother of John Palmer, 
good in low parts. 

26. The Elder Palmer: John Palmer (1742?-1798); "One of the most 
versatile as well as the most competent and popvilar of actors." {Did. 
Nat. Biog.) 

217:9. Captain. Absolute: A spirited soldier and lover in Sheridan's 
The Rivals. 

13. Dich Amlet: A gamester In Vanbrugh's comedy. The Confederacy. 
He tries to pass himself off as a fine gentleman. 

19. Wilding: The hero of Foote's play The Liar. Joseph Surface: 
A malicious, hypocritical character in Sheridan's School for Scandal. 

24. Congreve, TVilliam (1670-1729): One of the greatest English comic 
dramatists. Love for Love is one of his comedies. 

218:17. Metaphrases: Strict or literal translations; opposed to para- 
phrases. 

30. Wapping: A quarter of London on the left bank of the Thames, 
about two miles below London Bridge; the resort of sailors and stevedores. 

DISTANT CORRESPONDENTS 

219: title. B.F. .• Barron Field. See note p. 128, 1. 5. Lucas points 

out that the germ of this essay is to be found in an actual letter of Lamb's to 
Field, dated Aug. 31, 1817. The motif is perhaps to be discovered in an 
earlier bantering letter (Dec. 25, 1815) written to Thomas Manning, who 
was travelling in Thibet. In Lamb's review of Field's poems there 
are jocular remarks about plagiarism and kangaroos. 

19. Mrs. Rowe: Author of Friendship in Death, in Twenty Letters from 
the Dead to the Living. (Lucas.) 

20. Cowley, Abraham (1618-1667): English poet of the so-called 
metaphysical school. His Hymn to Light contains these lines: 

"Let a Post- Angel start with thee 
And thou the goal of earth shalt reach as soon as he." 

22. Lombard Street: For centuries a great banking center of London. 
The India House was not far away. 

28. Theosophist: Perhaps Lamb gives this name to the Man in the Moon 
because of his successive reappearances, reincarnation (a mode of reap- 
pearance, certainly) being one of the essential doctrines of theosophy. 
The Cent. Diet., quite unconscious of this passage, defines a theosophist 
as "one who professes to possess divine illumination." 

220:2. Parasangs: A Persian measure of distance about equal to 3^ 
mllpis — a familiar word to every schoolboy reader of Xenophon's Anabasis. 
Lamb uses it, probably, for the sake of its outlandishness. 



NOTES 327 

3. Plato's man: In this sentence the Australian savages, the Platonic 
doctrine of a self-existent "idea" (or archetype) of man, and the Man in 
the Moon contribute to the complicated allusion. In one of his Latin 
poems Milton speaks of the Platonic archetype as possibly inhabiting the 
moon. Mr. Lucas, following Hallward and Hill, thinks that Lamb had 
the passage in mind. 

17. In the Bench: The King's Bench Prison. (Lucas.) 

21. Munden, Joseph Shepherd (1758-1832): An English comedian. 
Old Dornton in Holcroft's Road to Ruin was his greatest part. He left 
the stage in 1824. 

25. Confusion of tenses: Lamb had used this idea in 1810 in a letter to 
his friend, Thomas Manning, then traveling in China: "The distance 
you are at cuts up tenses by the root." In the same letter, practising his 
doctrine as to the nature of epistolary matter, he included a number of 
puns he had recently made, among them his reply to the beggar woman 
p. 260. 

27. Postage: Communication by post. 

28. Bath: In Somersetshire. Devizes: A town in Wiltshire. 
221:9. Will Weatherall: Doubtless a fiction. 

12. Replication: A legal term, meaning answer. 

22. Our maid Becky: Lamb's friend Patmore has left amusing recol- 
lections of the tyranny of Becky over the Lamb household (see Lucas, Life, 
Vol. II., 292-5): "I believe there was no inconvenience, privation, or ex- 
pense, that they would not have put up with, rather than exchange her 
honest roughness for the servile civility of anybody else. ... At last 
Becky left them to be married ; and I believe this circumstance more than 
anything else, was the cause of their giving up housekeeping." 

31. Pleadings: The formal allegations of the parties to a suit at law. 

32. Flam: A lie, or hoax. 

222:11. Two prophets: According to the marginal chronology of the 
authorized version, Habakkuk's prophecy is dated nineteen years earlier 
than the beginning of the Book of Daniel. Lamb's joining of these two 
names may very possibly have been suggested by their conjunction in the 
apochryphal addition to the Book of Daniel, known as the History of 
Bel and the Dragon. 

18. Water-plates: A sort of dish with a receptacle for^hot water to 
keep the contents warm. 

21. Lord C ; Lamb's Key says "Lord Camelford." Thomas Pitt, 

second Baron Camelford (1775-1804), was a commander in the navy and 
a notorious duellist. He wished to be buried in Switzerland, and after 
he was killed in a duel, his body was embalmed and made ready for trans- 
portation abroad; but, the war preventing, the coffin was left in St. Anne's 
Church, Soho, and eventually lost sight of. (See Charles Reade, Jilt and 
Other Stories.) 



328 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA 

223:8. Tide-waiters: Customs officers who board, ships entering port, to 
enforce the customs regulations. 

12. 'Lustring: A kind of glossy silk like taffeta. 

14. Propitiatory: Not "serving as propitiation," the proper sense of the 
word, but "needing to be propitiated." St. Gothard (Gotthard): Bishop of 
Hildesheim (1038); patron saint of those in peril of the sea. 

15. Quietus: End, fate. 

28. Twinkling corpuscula: According to the corpuscular, or emission, 
theory (maintained by Sir Isaac Newton, but now universally rejected), 
light consisted of infinitesimal particles- or corpuscles, ejected by the 
luminous body. 

224:4. Fine slime of Nilus: The silt brought down by the yearly floods 
of the Nile makes Egypt one of the most fertile countries in the world. 

5. Melior lutus: Finer clay; perhaps an echo of Juvenal, Sat., xiv, 34. 

6. Sol pater: The Father Sun. 

20. Consult his visnomy: Look at his face in a glass. 
26. Peter Wilkins: See note, p. 74, 1. 5. 

26. Hades of Thieves: In 1787-88 the English government established 
a penal colony at Botany Bay, New South "Wales. Thence the settlement 
was transferred to the shores of Port Jackson, where Sydney was founded. 
Convicts were sent out as late as 1841, the total number of persons trans- 
ported reaching 83,000. 

27. Diogenes: A Greek philosopher, famous for his eccentricities. The 
story is that he was met one day in the market-place carrying a lantern; 
on being asked why he carried the lantern, he said he was looking for an 
honest man. 

225:4. Framed: i. e., formed, established, created. Pickpocket: Could 
Lamb have forgotten that kangaroos have pouches or pockets themselves? 

6. A priori: Lamb puns on the literal meaning of the Latin, which is 
"from before," i. e., "antecedently"; he makes it niean "anteriorly." 

7. Hind-shifters, loco-motor: Evidently an imitation o^ adoption of 
thieves' slang. 

10. Young Spartans: The ancient Spartans had a reputation for thievery 
and were said to train their youth in the most approved methods of stealing. 

11. Spoils their scanning: An allusion to the schoolboy's practice of 
laboriously coimting the feet of his verse-exercises on his fingers. 

16. Do you bleach: Mr. Lucas sees in this metaphor an 'allusion to the 
contention of some authorities on heraldry that its legitimacy wears out in 
three or four generations. 

10. Delphic voyages: The oracle of Delphi in Greece was world-famous 
and sought from all lands. 

20. Hemp: For the hangman's roi)e. 



NOTES 329 

28. Ruralists: A good example of Lamb's humorous use of formal 
Latin words. 

226:9. Sally W r: Lamb's Key says "Sally Winter." 

13. J. W.: James White. See p.248 ff. 

ON THE ARTIFICIAL COMEDY OF THE LAST CENTURY 

17. The Artificial Comedy, etc.: There is difference of opinion as to the 
soundness of Lamb's view of the subject of this essay. Macaulay, in his 
essay on The Comic Dram,atists of the Restoration (1841), objected strongly 
to Lamb's defence of the artificial comedy. "The morality," he says, 
"of the Country Wife and the Old Bachelor is the morality, not as Mr. 
Charles Lamb maintains, of an unreal world, but of a world which is 
a great deal too real. . . . It is the morality, not of a chaotic peo- 
ple, but of low town-rakes. . . . And the question is simply this, 
whether a man of genius who constantly and systematically endeavors to 
make this sort of character attractive, by uniting it with beauty, grace, 
dignity, spirit, a high social position, popularity, literature, wit, taste, 
knowledge of the world, brilliant success in every undertaking, does or 
does not make an ill use of his powers." James Russell Lowell, on the 
contrary (in Shakespeare Once More), says: "He had the great advantage 
of not feeling himself responsible for the manners of the inhabitants he 
found [in the old drama], and not thinking it needful to make them 
square with any Westminster catechism of aesthetics. . . . Wheii he 
arrived at the Dramatists of the Restoration, so far from being shocked, 
he was charmed with their pretty and immoral ways. . . . Lamb 
had the great advantage of seeing the elder dramatists as they were; it 
did not lie within his province to point out what they were not." Pro- 
fessor C. H. Herford (The Age of Wordsworth) is rather between Macau- 
lay and Lowell: "He was peculiarly ready to believe in the art which 
plays with the elements of life — ^which creates a fantastic world of its 
own — ^like humanity, but detached from the conditions of human beings. 
It was thus that he persuaded himself that the Restoration comedy was 
a genial fantasy, flung gaily before the eyes of audiences to whose habits 
and experience the Wishforts and the Millamants were as foreign as 
Caliban." 

The Comedy of Manners, imported from France, was comedy of wit and 
fashion, very different from the romantic comedy of Shakespeare and the 
comedy of humors of Ben Jonson. The chief writers of the Restoration 
Comedy (so-called because the new style came in upon the Restoration of 
the Stuarts, 1661) were Sir George Etherege (1634-1691?): The Comical 
Revenge (1664), She Would if She Could (1668), The Man of Mode (1676); 
William Wycherley (1640-1715): The Gentleman Dancing Master (1671), 
Love in a Wood (1671), The Country Wife (1673), The Plain Dealer (1674); 
William Congreve (1670-1729): The Old Bachelor (1693), The Double 
Dealer (1693), Love for Love (1695), The Mourning Bride (1697), The Way 
of the World (1700); George Farquhar (1678-1707): Sir Harry Wildair 
(1701), The Inconstant (1703), The Recruiting Officer (1706), The Beaux' 



330 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA 

Stratagem (1707), and others; Sir John Vanbrugh (1666?-1726): The 
Relapse (1637), The Provoked Wife (1G98), The Confederacy (1705), and 
Others. Congreve was the most brilliant of them. 

19. Exploded: i. e., hissed. 

227:28. Mournful privilege of Ulysses: In his wanderings homeward 
from Troy, Ulysses, after he had left Circe's isle, visited Hades to learn 
whether he should ever see again his wife and Ithaca. 

31. Indifferent to neither: Indifferent to both or either w^ould make easier 
sense. 

228:3. Alsatia: "Explained as a cant name for Whitefriars [the ancient 
monasters^ was just off Fleet Street], which, possessing certain privileges 
of sanctuary, became for that reason. a nest of those mischievous characters 
who were generally obnoxious to the law. . . . James I. confirmed 
and added to [these immunities] by a charter in 1608. Shadwell . . . 
made some literary use of Whitefriars in his play of the Squire of Alsatia." 
(Sir Walter Scott, Introd, to The Fortunes of Nigel.) 

10. Surtout: A broad-skirted overgarment. 

229:4. Catos of the pit: Cato, surnamed the Censor, a Roman 
statesman, "sought to restore the integrity of morals and the simplicity of 
manners prevalent in the early days of the republic." 

6. Political justice: This reading, which is followed in all editions of the 
collected essays which I have examinea, is, I feel sure, a misprint, not a 
correction, of ''poetical justice" of the original text of the London Magazine. 
The passage is incoherent and rather blind. I interpret thus: The 
modem play being built upon current, actual notions of morality; the 
poetical justice meted out by the modern author to his characters must 
conform to the standards of actual justice, i. e., "the standard of police." 
Such an atmosphere will blight any character from the fairyland of the 
older comedy. 

10. Swedenhorgian had spirit: Emanuel Swedenborg (1688-1772), a 
Swedish philosopher and mystic theologian, believed in the existence of 
good and bad spirits which had been men. He was the founder of the New 
Church, or Church of the New Jerusalem, organized in London in 1778. 

13. Fainall, Mirabel, Dorimant, Lady Touchwood: Characters respec- 
tively in Congreve's Way of the World, Farquhar's Inconstant, Etherege's 
Man of Mode, Congreve's Double Dealer. 

20. Cuckoldry: A cuckold is a man whose wife is imfaithful. Utopia: 
An imaginary island, the seat of an ideal commonwealth described in Sir 
Thomas More' s political romance C/iopza (1516); generally used of any 
imaginary and ideal land, 

29. Angelica: The principal female Character in Congreve's Love for 
Love. 

^ZQ'.12. The impertinent Goshen, etc.: i. e., the frivolous, imreal world 
of the fashionable comedy would have shown in the light of true moral 
feeling all its wickedness and insubstantiality. 



NOTZrj 331 

231:2. Sir Simon, etc.: These are ail characters in Wycherlcy's Love 
in a Wood. 

7. Frogs and mice: The allusion is to the Batrachomyomachia, an 
ancient Greek mock epic, formerly ascribed to Homer, that deals with ^e 
war between the frogs and the mice. 

9. Atlantis: A mythical island in the Atlantic Ocean, northwest of 
Africa. Bacon wrote an allegorical romance, The New Atlantis, picturing 
a community governed only by conscience and the moral law. Lamb 
may have had this in mind, 

18. The sentimental comedy: This began with Sir Richard Steele's plays: 
The Funeral (1102), The Lying Lover (1103), The Tender Husband (1703), 
The Conscious Lovers (1722). 

23. Plausibility: Palmer was known by the nickname of Jack Plausible. 

31. His better brother: i. e., Charles Surface. 

232:29. Bowles: Carington Bowles, a publisher of prints. (Lucas.) 

233:3. Kissing of the rod: To kiss the rod is to accept punishment 
submissively. 

11. Teazle, Sir Peter: A cross old fellow in The School for Scandal. 
His wife, Lady Teazle, the chief female character in the comedy, is 
a country girl who plunges into the fashionable life of the town and beats 
"the veterans of the art of scandal" at their own game. 

21. King, Thomas (1730-1805): Actor and dramatist, for a long time 
the mainstay of Drury Lane Theatre. He was the original Sir Peter Teazle. 

234:12. Crim. con.: i. e., criminal conversation; a frequent abbrevia- 
tion of the technical name of a suit for damages for adultery. 

20. Crdbtree, Sir Benjamin Backbite, Snake, Mrs. Candour: All char- 
acters in The School for Scandal. 

23. Amphisboenas: Amphisbaena was a fabulous serpent with a head 
on either end. 

27. Miss Pope: Jane Pope (1742-1818), an actress in comedy at Drury 
Lane Theatre. She played Mrs. Candour "in the immortal first performance 
of the School jor Scandal." Many of her parts "she played at sixty with 
the sprightliness of sixteen." 

31. Saturnalia: A Roman festival period, given up to feasting, merry- 
making, and license. 

235:6. Notional justice, etc.: *. e., imaginary, ideal; see note on notional 
essences, p. 152, 1. 24. 

10. Manager's comedy: Sheridan was manager of Drury Lane Theatre 
where his brilliant play was produced in 1777. Miss Farren: Eliza Farren 
(1759?-1829), an English actress, a rival of Mrs. Abington. She left the 
stage 1797. 

11. Mrs. Abingdon: Fanny (Barton) Abington (1737-1815), an e^ninent 
English actress. Her best part was Lady Teazle in Sheridan's School for 



332 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA 

Scandal, which she created. Smith, William (17307-1819): An actor, 
known as "Gentleman Smith." He was the Charles Surface of the first 
performance of The School for Scandal, an impersonation "held never to 
have been equalled." 

14. John Kemhle (1757-1823): A celebrated English tragedian, 
brother of Charles Kemble and Mrs. Sarah (Kemble) Siddons. His best 
role was Coriolanus. 

237:2. Otway, Thomas (1651-1685): The principal tragic dramatist 
of the Restoration. He wrote Alcihiades (1675), The Orphan (1680), 
Venice Preserved (1682), and other plays. 

4. Adventure bottomry: Bottomry is a kind of mortgage by which a 
person pledges his ship as security for money advanced for the purpose of 
the voyage. Sir Edward Mortimer: A character in George Colman, Jr.'s 
tragedy, The Iron Chest, founded on Godwin's novel, Caleb Williams. 

7. G.: William Godwin, Shelley's father-in-law. His Inquiry Con- 
cerning Political Justice was a visionary and radical work. He wrote also 
several novels, of a speculative tendency. Lamb calls him "the Professor" \ 
in his letter. Antonio, for which Lamb wrote a himiorous epilogue, had - 
its first and only performance Dec. 13, 1800. 

31. His friend M .• John Marshall. Lamb calls him "the old, 

steady, unalterable friend of the Professor" (in a letter). 

238:24. "From every pore," etc.: From Lee's Rival Queens. Lamb 
had used the quotation iri a delicious letter to Manning (Dec. 16, IS'^0) 
recounting the failure of Antonio. Writing to Godwin the day after the 
performance. Lamb concludes his postscript thus: "I am emboldened 
by a little jorum of punch (vastly good) to say that next to one man, I am 
the most hurt at our ill success. The breast of Hecuba, where she did 
suckle Hector, looked not to be more lovely than Marshall's forehead when 
it spit forth sweat, at Critic-swords contending. I remember two honest 
I*' "es by Marvel (whose poems by the way I am just going to possess) : 

'Where every Mower's wholesome heat 

Smells like an Alexander's sweat.* " 
The sentence about Hecuba is an adaptation of Coriolanus I., iii, 43-46. 

239:14. R s: Frederic Reynolds (1764-1841), dramatist, author 

of nearly 100 tragedies and comedies, of which about 20 were popular in 
their day. One of his plays. The Caravan, included a rescue of a drowning 
child by a real dog, with real rocks and real water. Byron pays his re- 
spects to him in English Bards and Scotch Reviewers. 

240:20. An . . . so: If they would take it, very well; if not, 
that also was very well. 

27. Elvira: In a summary of the plot of Antonio quoted by Lucas 
{Letters I., 201) the heroine is named Helena; Elvira appears in Dryden's 
Spanish Friar and in some other plays with Spanish setting. Lamb's 
memory seems to have played him false. 



NOTES 333 

241:3. Exorbitant: i. e., outrageous, exceeding proper bounds — the 
etymological meaning of the word. 

12. Misprision oj parricide: In law misprision is criminal nejlect or 
passive complicity. 

16. Fasthold: Apparently a "portmanteau word," made up of Jastness 
and stronghold. 

23. Nigritude: Blackness. 



i 



THE PRAISE OF CHIMNEY-SWEEPERS 



242:2. Clergy imps: See note on p. 249, 1. 28. 

9. Fauces Averni: The jaws of Hell. 

26. Kibed: i. e., chapped or chilblained. 

28. Tester: A sixpence. 

243:4. Mr. Read: "Mr. Thomas Read's Saloop Coflfee House was at 
No. 102 Fleet Street." (Lucas.) Saloop is sassafras-tea. See the quo- 
tations under Saloop, in Cent. Diet. 

18. Fuliginous: Sooty. 

22. Bitter wood: Lamb plays on the metaphorical sense of worm- 
wood, — misery. 

24. Lenitive: See p. 104, 1. 16. 

30. Valerian: An herb with a pungent odor. 

244:19. Precocious: The strict etymological sense is "early ripe." 

21. Hammersmith: A suburb of London, formerly noted for market 
gardens and nurseries. 

245:9. When I walk westward: i. e., from the India House to his lodg- 
ings in Great Russell Street. 

21. The March to Finchley: Hogarth's picture (now in the Found- 
ling Hospital, London), humorously depicting the confusion at the break-up 
of a camp of the Guards on Finchley Common at the time of the Young 
Pretender's uprising. 

246:23. The Young Montagu: "Ran away from Westminster school 
more than once, becoming, among other things, a chimney-sweeper." 
(Lucas.) 

25. DefiUations: i. e., kidnappings. 

27. Howard: The family name of the Dukes of Norfolk. 

247:31. Incunabula: Literally, cradle-clothes; but in English used 
metaphorically to mean origin. Lamb doubtless had both meanings in 
mind. 

248:5. James White: At Christ's Hospital with Lamb, admitted 
on the presentation of Thomas Coventry. He published a parody, 
Original Letters, etc., of Sir John FaUtajf and his Friends (179G), in which 
Lamb almost certainly collaborated. 



334 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA 

11. Bartholomew Fair: A fair formerly held in Smithfleld on St. Bar- 
tholomew's Day; in 1840 removed to Islington and discontinued 1853. 
Originally it was a great cloth-fair, but gradually changed into a Saturnalia, 
or occasion for merry-making and license. Ben Jonson portrayed its 
humors in his comedy Bartholomew Fair (1614). •. 

16. Infantry: An ancient and honorable ptm. 

20. Quoited: i. e., thrown. 

28. Napery: Table linen. 

249:2. Bigod: See p. 82, 1. 15. 

4. Rochester, John Wilmot, Earl of (1647-1680): A poet, courtier, 
famous wit, and infamous rake. Dorimant, in Etherege's Man of Mode, 
was intended as a portrait of him. 

9. Dame Ursula: Ursula is a fat pig-woman in Jonson's Bartholomew 
Fair. 

13. The concave: The vault of the sky. 

22. Kissing-crust: The overhanging crust of a loaf. 

28. "Cloth'": Properly, the clergy; a joke at the expense of both parson 
and sweep. 

A COMPLAINT OF THE DECAY OP BEGGARS IN THE 
METROPOLIS 

250:17. Besom: An old word for broom. 

18. Alcides: Another name for Hercules, 

23. Purlieus: Outskirts, environs; frequently used of shabby or dis- 
reputable parts of a city. Eleventh persecution: Historians count ten gen- 
eral persecutions of the Christians, from Nero to Diocletian. (Haydn's 
Diet, of Dates.) 

251:2. Bellum ad exterminationem: Wai* of extermination. 

10. Rates: The usual word in England for local taxes. 

16. Dionysius: A tyrant of Syracuse, twice deposed. 

17. Vandyke: See note, p. 99, 1. 22. 

18. Ferula: Schoolmaster's rod. 

21. Belisarius: A great general of the Byzantine (Roman) Empire. 
The tale of his blindness and beggary is not true. Obolus: A small Greek 
coin. Lamb translates it "penny" on p. 256, 1. 17. 

252:3. Three-foot . . shopboard: Lamb alludes to the practice 

of tailors of sitting upon their tables or counters as they sew. 

14. Cresseid: In Chaucer's poem and Shakespeare's play Troilus and 
Cressida, a Trojan lady who deserts her lover Troilus for the Greek Diomed. 
The Scotch poet Henryson wrote a continuation to Chaucer's story. The 
Testament of Cresseide, in which he makes her, now a leper, beg alms by 
the wayside as Troilus rides by 

15. Other whiteness: i. e., from leprosy. 



NOTES 335 

16. Lazar: i. e., a leper. Clapdish: A dish with a lid to make a noise 

17. Lucian wits: See note, p. 193, 1. 3. 

20. Semiramis: A legendary Assyrian queen famed for her luxury and 
power. 

29. ''Neighbour grice'' : Each grade of poverty is mocked by the grade 
next above. Grice: A step. 

253:12. Jostle with him for the wall: To "take the wall" of a person is 
to take precedence of him; from the desirability of keeping close to the 
houses to avoid the mud and filth of tlie ancient streets. 

17. Led captain: Obsequious attendant, henchman, hanger-on. 

21. Tenure: Clearly used as meaning something like uniform, badge of 
office, though the dictionaries give no such meaning; but see tenure-law, 
tenure-sword in Cent. Diet. 

254:9. Ballad singer: The ballad singers were not a very reputable 
class of citizens, but certainly a very interesting one. -See Autolycus, in 
the Winter's Tale, for a picture of the ballad singer of Shakespeare's day. 

12. Emblems: Symbolical designs or figures, often accompanied with 
words intended to convey some truth or moral, the instability of Fortune 
and the shortness of life being favorite themes. Mementoes: Reminders of 
death (from the Latin memento mori), often in the form of a ring with 
skull and crossbones carved upon it. Dial-mottoes: Appropriately em- 
phasizing the flight of time. Spital sermons: Sermons preached before 
the iamates of a hospital or asylum. The Blue Coat Boys used to hear 
two special spital sermons in Easter week. (Lucas.) , 

17. Tobit: The chief personage of the apocryphal Book of Tobit. 
He became blind in his fifty-eighth year, but was restored by his son 
Tobias, through the help of the good angel Raphael. 

29. St. L ; B — rector of .• Lamb's Key says "no meaning." 

255:3. Vincent Bourne (1695-1747): An English writer of Latin verse 
{Poemata, etc., 1734, and other works). "What a heart that man had, all 
laid out upon town scenes . . . making a flower of everything, his 
diction all Latin and his tiioughts all English." (Lamb to Wordsworth, 
Apr., 1815.) Lamb published translations of his poems in Album Verses, 
1830 (see Introd., p. 29.), the Epitaph on a Dog among them. It had first 
appeared, however, in Hunt's Indicator, 1820. 

256:36. A well-known figure: Mr. Lucas identifies the subject of the 
reference as Samuel Horsey, a prominent figure in London, said to have 
been known as the King of the Beggars. He gives a portrait of Horsey, but 
the "machine of wood" instead of having wheels, as Lamb implies, looks 
like a stumpy sled. A biography of Horsey quoted by Lucas ends thus: 
"Of all other men. Horsey has the most dexterous mode of turning, or rather 
swinging himself into a gin-shop. He dashes the door open by forcibly 
striking the front of his sledge and himself against it." 

257:12. Riots of 1780: The Gordon Riots, the result of anti-Catholic 
agitation led by Lord George Gordon. Groundling: The usual meaning is 



336 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA 

a person who stood in the pit of the old-fashioned theatre instead of taking 
a stall or seat in the surrounding galleries. 

13. AntoBus: In Greek mythology a giant, son of the Sea and the Earth. 
He was invincible so long as he touched the grouad. Hercules wrestle I 
with him and overcame him by lifting him in the air and throttling him. 

15. Elgin marbles: Sculptures taken from the Parthenon, of Athens, 
and brought to England by the Earl of Elgin, 1801-3. They are in the 
British Museum. They include a large part of the frieze of the temple, 
in bas-relief, and magnificent figures more or less mutilated, from the 
pediment. It is hardly to be doubted that Lamb had in mind particularly 
the splendid recumbent male figure comrnonly said to represent Theseus, 
or, more properly, Cephissus. (In the English name Elgin the g is hard.) 

20. Mandrake: A plant whose root, commonly forked, somewh-^t 
resembles the human form. Various superstitions attached to it; amoag 
others, that it was supposed to shriek when pulled out of the ground. The 
word was used humorously or as a term of reproach for small persons; 
cf. II. Henry IV, i, 2, 17, and Romeo and Juliet, iv, 3, 47. 

23. Centaur, Lapithan: The Centaurs — half man, half horse — waged 
a fierce war with the Lapithae, according to Greek legend. The war forms 
the subject of some of the reliefs from the Parthenon among the Elgin 
marbles. 

26. Os sublime: Literally the uplifted coimtenance. 
258:8. Lusus naturae: Freak of nature. 

9. Lusus accidentium: Victim of mischances. 
28. Yorick: See note, p. 140, 1. 10. 
259:8. Peckham: A suburb of London, now built up. 
11. Bartimeus: A blind beggar whose sight was restored by Christ. 
See Mark, X, 46-52. 

260:9. Mumping: Whining, beseeching. See p. 84, 1. 16. 

13. Beadswoman: See note, p. 58, 1. 15. 

14. My friend L .• Lamb himself. 

24. ''The Beggar's Petition": "A stock piece for infant recitation a 
hundred years ago." (Lucas.) 

27. Goldsmith, Oliver (1728-1774): English poet, novelist, dramatist, 
and miscellaneous writer: The Citizen of the World (llGi), The Traveller 
(1765), The Vicar of Wakefield (1766), The Good Natured Man (1768), The 
Deserted Village (1770), She Stoops to Conquer (1774). 

261:4. Against Wordsworth: In his celebrated preface to the Lyrical 
Ballads (2nd edition, 1800) Wordsworth had objected to the insincerity 
and artifice of conventional "poetic diction," and had announced the 
principle of the experiment in poetry which he undertook in his con- 
tributions to the Lyrical Ballads; viz, to treat subjects drawn from common 
life in a selection of the language actually used by men in ordinary talk. 



I 



NOTES 337 

A DISSERTATION UPON ROAST PIG 

6. My friend M ; Thomas Manning, the Chinese traveler, who did. 

tell Lamb a story of some sort on which this extravaganza was based. 

11. Conjucius (550-478 B. C): A celebrated Chinese philosopher. 

17. Ho-ti: It is possible that this fanciful name is nothing but the Greek 
indefinite neuter pronomi qti , meaning anything, dressed up to look like 
Chinese. Bo-bo: From booby? Mast: Acorns, beechnuts, and the like. 

24. Antediluvian: Ancient; literally, before the Deluge. 
262:21. Crackling: The crisp rind of roasted pork. 

264:17. Assize town: Assizes are sessions of court held twice a year 
by general commission issued to the judges of the High Court of Justice, 
in each of the cotmties of England and Wales. 

266:26. Mundus edibilis: Edible world. 

26. Princeps obsoniorum: Chief of viands. 

29. Hobbledehoys: Raw striplings, as yet hardly men. 

31. Amor immunditice: Love of filth, which Lamb suggests is the 
original sin of pigkind. 

266:21. The string: By which he is hung before the open fire. 
23. Radiant jellies — shooting stars: "Messrs. Hallward and Hill have 
this interesting note: 'In Donne's Eclogues there is a reference to the 
superstition that shooting stars left jellies behind them when they fell: 
"As he that sees a star fall runs apace 
And finds a jelly in the place." ' " (Lucas.) 

30. Filthy conversation: Conversation here means behavior. 

267:8. Sapors: i. e., delicacies (Latin eapor taste, whence savoury). 
See note, p. 190, 1. 31. 

20. Batten: To grow fat. 

268;3. Villatic: Of the barnyard. 

4. Brawn: Boar's fiesh; also head-cheese. 

15. My good old aunt: See p. 65 and p. 138-9. But very likely Lamb 
is here writing of another aunt (John Lamb, the elder, had two sisters, as 
we know from his will), for Aunt Hetty lived with the Lambs in the 
Temple; and London Bridge would not be at all on his way to school from 
there. The implication is that the "holiday" was spent away from home. 
Mr. Lucas somewhat doubtfully accepts this view {Works, Vol. I., p. 25, 
note) . 

16. Nice: i. e., particular, scrupulously careful. 

269:18. Intenerating and dulcifying: Making tender and sweet. 

25. St. Omer's: A Jesuit college. Of course Lamb was never there. 
Incidentally he pokes a little tun at the triviality of much of the discussion, 
induced by the study of casuistry and scholastic logic. 

270:4. Barbecue: To roast whole. 

6. Shalots: A sort of onions. 



338 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA 

A BACHELOR'S COMPLAINT OF THE BEHAVIOR OF MARRIED 

PEOPLE 

271:24. Usufruct: In law, temporary enjoyment of property that 
belongs to another. 

272:16. Made free of the company: See note, p. 116., 1. 26. 

273:7. Phoenixes: The phoenix "was a fabulous bird which, after a 
solitary existence of 500 years or so, the only one of its kind in the woridLs 
renewed its youth in a fire of its own kindling. 

18. Churching of women: "A title popularly given to the liturgical form 
of thanksgiving for women after childbirth." (^Cent Diet.) 

274:21. Per se: In themselves. 

275:22. They: The wives. 

276:12. A humorist: As on p. 48, 1. 13; t. e., a person of caprice, — a 
crank. 

278:18. Testacea: In imitation of the practice (common in satire) of 
indicating a person by an appositely invented name. Lamb calls the lady 
Testacea because he goes on to speak of oysters! (Testacea are shellfish.) 
Similarly Cerasia, from the Latin word for cherries. 

25. Morellas: "To 'Morellas' [in The Reflector] was this footnote: 
'I don't know how to speU this word; I mean Morella cherries.' " (Lucas.) 
The Morello is a dark-red cultivated variety, much esteemed. 

ON THE ACTING OF MUNDEN 

279: title. On the acting ' of Munden: The text as here printed (see 
note, p. 204, title) is all that Lamb saved for the collected Elia essays from 
the London Magazine paper, which in its turn had been reprinted from the 
Examiner of Nov. 7 and 8, 1819. Munden: See note, p. 220, 1. 21. Lamb 
wrote a comic Autobiography of Mr. Munden for the London, 1825. 

4. Cockletop: A credulous old man in O'Keeffe's farce. Modern 
Antiques. 

27. Edwin: There were two John Edwins, father (1749-1790) and 
son (1768-1805), both actors. (Lucas.) 

280:4. Farley, Knight, Liston: Contemporary comedians. Lamb wrote 
a fictitious Biographical Memoir of Mr. Liston for the London, 1825, of 
which he said in a letter: "Of all the lies I ever 'put oflf' I value this most." 

9. Hydra: A fabulous Greek monster with nine heads, each of which, 
being cut off, was immediately succeeded by two new ones. Hercules 
killed it by scorching the stumps as fast as he cut off the heads. 

18. River-horse: Hippopotamus. 

20. Sir Christopher Curry: In Colman's Inkle and Yarico. 

21. Old Dornton: See note p. 220, 1. 21. 

31. Sessa: An obsolete interjection of uncertain meaning. 



NOTES 339 

281:1. The Cobbler oj Preston: A play by Charles Johnson (1716) founded 
on The Taming of the Shrew. (Lucas.) 

9. Cassiopeia's chair: One of the northern constellations, on the op- 
posite side of the pole star from the Great Bear, or Dipper. 

11. A beggar, etc.: That is, Michael Angelo (see note, p. 174, 1. 2 7) 
could glorify even a beggar by his art. 

12. Fuseli: A Swiss-English painter and art critic (1741-1825). 

17. Platonic idea: Plato taught the doctrine of the existence of ideas 
as entities in themselves, the patterns, as it were, of actual concrete things. 
See pp. 90, 1. 22; 152, 1. 24; 220, 1. 3. 

18. Quiddity: True essential quality. 

MODERN GALLANTRY 

24. Females: See an article in Harper's Magazine for August, 1906, 
where Professor Lounsbury discusses the changes of fashion in the use of 
words, particularly noticing the vogueof /emaZe for "woman" in the early 
part of the last century and the present avoidance of it in that sense. 

282:8. Dorimant: A witty fashionable libertine in Etherege's comedy 
The Man of Mode, "a type of the brazen faced lady-killer." 

28. Lothbury: A district and street in London, once the centre of the 
pewterers' and candlestick-makers' trade. 

283:16. Has "overstood her market": Has outlasted the demand. 

20. Joseph Paice: A merchant and director of the South-Sea Company, 
who took Lamb into his office (about 1789 or 1790) to learn bookkeeping, 
got him into the South-Sea House in 1791, and into the East India House 
in 1792. (Lucas.) 

22. Edwards, Thomas (1699-1757): An English critic; wrote Canons of 
Criticism upon the appearance of Warburton's edition of Shakespeare, 
(1747). 

28. Though bred a Presbyterian: The sect of the Presbyterians was 
recruited chiefly from the plain people of the middle classes. 

284:2. Casualties: Chance circumstances. 

17. Preux Chevalier: Perfect knight; literally, knight of prowess. 

18. Sir Calidore: In The Faerie Queene the type of perfect courtesy. 
Sir Tristan: One of the knights of Arthur's court, introduced by Spenser 
into The Faerie Queene. He slays a discourteous knight, in defence of a 
lady, and is made a squire by Calidore. 



APPENDIX 



APPENDIX 

(Adapted, and enlarged, from the Manual for the Study of English 
Classics, by George L. Marsh) 

HELPS TO STUDY 

Chakles Lamb 

What was the station of Lamb's family (p. 9)? Note where 
members of it are described in these Essays (pp. 168 ff., etc.). 

What was the principal school he attended, and who were his 
more important schoolmates (p. 10) ? At what age did he leave 
school? 

What was his principal employment (p. 11) and for how long? 
What was his attitude toward it? 

With whom did Lamb live nearly all his life, and why (p. 14) ? 
Why did he never marry (p. 18) ? Note allusions to his love affair, 
as in "Dream Children" (pp. 199 ff.). 

Note the long list of Lamb's friends (p. 17), and the extent to 
which they represent nearly the whole literary life of the period. 

What was Lamb's attitude toward the country (p. 16)? Con- 
trast that of Wordsworth and Coleridge and other romanticists. 

What different kinds of literary work did Lamb do before he 
found his particular forte (pp. 20-22) ? In what work did he col- 
laborate with his sister? 

What was the purpose and the significance of Lamb 's Specimens 
of ... . Dramatic Poets (pp. 24-26) ? 

When and under what circumstances did Lamb get started as an 
essayist (p. 26) ? Note the origin and progress of the Essays of 
Elia. 

The Essays of Elia in Detail 

''The South-Sea House"— What was the ''famous Bubble" 
(p. 287)? Why was the company kept up? When had Lamb 
worked there, and how long (p. 11) ? Note statements that are un- 

343 



344 APPENDIX 

true of Lamb himself, and hence misleading as to authorship (pp. 
45, 47, 288, etc.). What do you think of the ending of this essay? 
Is there any inartistic sense of incompleteness? 

*' Oxford in the Vacation ' '—Note the sketch of '*G. D." as a 
typical scholar. Compare Chaucer's Clerk (Prologue to Canter- 
bury Tales in Lake Classics edition). What is to be said of the 
mixing of ''you" and ''thee" in the second paragraph (p. 55)? 
Note reflection of Lamb's feeling as to his lack of a university 
education. 

"Christ's Hospital Five-and-Thirty Years Ago" — What devices 
are there to conceal authorship in this essay? Who was the "poor 
friendless boy" in whose person Lamb speaks (p. 65)? Note 
especially the estimate of Coleridge in this essay. What about the 
ending — is it unduly abrupt ? 

"The Two Eaees of Men" — Note again the allusions to Cole- 
ridge. What serious thought is there back of the whimsicalities 
of this essay? 

"New Year's Eve" — Why is there such a homily on death here? 
What is the effect of Lamb's allusions to his own past, his love 
affair, etc.? Has the poem cited from Cotton (pp. 94, 95) real 
poetic quality? Does it deserve Lamb's comment? 

"Mrs. Battle's Opinions on Whist" — Are there any serious 
merits in the defense of gambling (p. 103) ? 

' ' Valentine 's Day ' ' — Do Lamb 's comments indicate much dif- 
ference between the observance of Valentine's Day in his time and 
now? 

"A Chapter on Ears" — Note the error as to Defoe (p. 305). 
How seriously is this essay to be taken? Apply it to present-day 
music. Why was the "P. S. " (beginning p. 115) omitted in the 
collected edition of the Essays? What is the point of this? Is it 
really unfriendly to Hunt? 

"All Fools' Day" — This essay depends to even an unusual de- 
gree on a background of literary and historical knowledge on the 
reader 's part. 

"A Quakers' Meeting" — Would Lamb find reasons for similar 
comments on this subject now? What peculiarities of the sect 
which still survive does he mention? 

"The Old and the New Schoolmaster" — Was Lamb really de- 



APPENDIX 345 

ficient in range of information and interest, as pretended (pp. 127 
ff.) ? Do you get any valuable notions about education from this 
essay — notions of value today? If so, what? What is the gist 
of Lamb's contrast between the old and the new schoolmaster? 
Discuss the merits of the contentions near the top of page 135. 
What ground is there for the implication as to Lamb 's work near 
the top of page 136? 

* ' My Kelations ' ' — Study the discussion of ' ' J. E. " as a charac- 
ter sketch. Note the art allusions in this essay. 

* ' Mackery End, in Hertfordshire ' ' — Study also the discussion of 
^^ Bridget Elia" as a character sketch. Note the self -revelations 
of this essay. 

*' Imperfect Sympathies" — How seriously is Lamb's estimate of 
the Scotch to be taken? Of the other classes here discussed? Com- 
pare, as to Quakers, pages 121 ff. 

' ' The Old Benchers of the Inner Temple ' ' — What appropriate- 
ness has the quotation from Marvell (p. 165) ? What poetic 
merits? What notions of Lamb's father are gained from this essay 
(as ''Lovel," pp. 168 ff.) ? 

'''Witches and Other Night-Fears" — Note uses of the supersti- 
tion as to waxen images (p. 177) in Eossetti's '^ Sister Helen "- 
and in Hardy's Beturn of the Native. Discuss the merits of the 
criticism by Southey (mentioned p. 319). 

' ' Grace Before Meat ' ' — Criticize or defend Lamb 's comment on 
this essay, quoted at the top of page 320. 

''My First Play" — Note the significance of the mentions of 
Sheridan (here and elsewhere). 

"Dream-Children: A Eeverie" — ^Divide this into paragraphs. 
Is there any good reason for making it all one paragraph? Com- 
pare Kipling's "They," as to idea. 

"On Some of the Old Actors" — How many of the actors and 
plays mentioned here had you ever heard of before? What prin- 
ciples of acting may be drawn from this essay ? 

"Distant Correspondents" — What real difficulties are brought 
out, in an exaggerated way, in this essay? Note the number of the 
word "news" (near top of p. 220). What are the most important 
qualities of a good letter, according to Lamb? 

"On the Artificial Comedy of the Last Century" — What is the 



346 APPENDIX 

most important critical idea here? Discuss the view Lamb takes. 
Is it possible for us to think of anything that we see or read as a 
play, as if it were quite remote from real life ? Note the erroneous 
judgment as to a play of Sheridan's (p. 231). 

' ^ The Praise of Chimney-Sweepers ' ' — Note an allusion to Words- 
worth 's ''Ode on ... . Immortality" (p. 248, the ode may be 
found in The Golden Treasury, Lake edition;. 

''A Complaint of the Decay of Beggars in the Metropolis" — 
What sound idea is there in this essay; what real use, to human 
nature, of beggars? Compare Wordsworth's "Old Cumberland 
Beggar. ^ ^ 

''A Dissertation Upon Eoast Pig" — What well marked parts are 
there here? Which seems to you most interesting and effective? 

"A Bachelor 's Complaint of the Behavior of Married People ' ' — 
Sum up the serious criticisms to be found back of the whimsicality 
of this essay. 

* ' Modern Gallantry ' ' — How much of this can be applied at the 
present time? 

The Essays of Elia, General Matters 

Pick out in the essays the most notable examples of the different 
qualities mentioned in pages 31 ff.; e. g. : 

1. Humor (pp. 108 ff., 261 ff., etc.; note the distinction from 
wit, p. 31) ; 

2. Tenderness (pp. 89 ff., 199 ff., etc.) ; 

3. "Intimate personalness " (examples almost everywhere). 
Classify the essays read in any way that seem-s proper (e. g., 

personal reminiscences, character sketches, criticisms, etc.). Can 
any of them be called short stories? Which come near to being 
short stories? What do such lack? 

Pick out an essay that seems particularly notable for pathos, and 
try to discover how the pathos is secured, its qualities, etc. Is it 
natural, quiet, exaggerated, self-conscious? 

What seems to you most striking about Lamb 's humor ? How is 
it secured? Is it mainly in thought or in style? 

Find a number of examples illustrating Lamb 's fondness for the 
quaint prose writers of the seventeenth century — examples not so 



APPENDIX 347 

much of allusions to these writers as of their influence on Lamb 's 
style, in choice of words, sentence structure, figures, etc. What 
authors' works do you find most frequently alluded to or quoted? 

Do you find rigidity of logical structure in any of the essays read! 
Is the plan ever prominently in view? On the other hand, do you 
find any incoherence or lack of clearness in the order? 

Study the sentence structure. Note how loose and rambling the 
sentences frequently are. What defense may be made for such 
sentences ? 

Pick out the unusual words, or words used in an unusual way, 
on any page. Try substituting other words, and note if your sub- 
stitute in any case seems as effective as the original. 

Examine Lamb's figures of speech with care. Do you find them 
fiequent? Are they taken more from nature or from human life? 
Do you find that they reveal Lamb's liking for the city in prefer- 
ence to the country? 

THEME SUBJECTS 

1. Lamb's life (pp. 9-19). 

2. Lamb in business. (Something about the positions he held, 
the companies be worked for, etc.; or, more imaginatively, an ac- 
count of a typical day's work somewhat as he might have written 
it himself.) 

3. Character sketches, as gleaned from the essays, of the fol- 
lowing : 

Lamb himself (may be divided according to different ele- 
ments of his character, if the whole subject seems to pre- 
sent too much material) ; 

''Bridget Elia" (pp. 146 ff.) ; 

''James Elia" (pp. 140 ff.) ; 

Coleridge (pp. 79, 84-87) ; 

"Mrs. Battle" (pp. 96 ff.)." 

4. An imaginary talk between Charles and Mary Lamb about 
some play or some character of Shakspere. 

5. A theme on persons associated with the writer in an office, 
or in school, or at home; somewhat after the manner of Lamb on 
pages 48 ff. 



348 APPENDIX 

6. A present-day visit to Oxford or Cambridge in vacatir 
(pp. 55 ff.). 

7. Reminiscences of the student's first school^ or first day 
school (pp. 64 ff.). 

8. What Laml> would have thought of a New Year's eve i 
Chicago (or some other American city). See pages 87 ff. 

9. What Mrs. Battle would think of auction bridge, or some it 
other present-day game of cards (pp. 96 ff.). 

10. A Quaker meeting the student has attended (pp. 121 ff.) 

11. Lamb's recollections of his father (pp. 168 ff.). 

12. Your own commonest dream or nightmare or childish supe' 
stition. (Cf. pp. 177 ff.) 

13. Your own first play (pp. 194 ff.). 

14. An ideal letter (pp. 219 ff.). 

15. An imaginary account of the origin of some favorite dish 
somewhat after the manner of Lamb (pp. 261 ff.). 

SELECTIONS FOR CLASS READING 

1. The old South-Sea House (pp. 45-48). 

2. Reminiscences of Christ's Hospital (pp. 64-68). 

3. Coleridge (pp. 79, 84-87). 

4. Borrowers and lenders (pp. 80-82). 

5. New Year thoughts (pp. 87-93). 

6. Lamb's ear for music (pp. 108-112). 

7. ''A Quaker's Meeting" (pp. 121-27). 

8. Thoughts about schoolmasters (pp. 131-36). 

9. Lamb's brother (pp. 140-49). 

10. ''Bridget Elia" (pp. 146-46). 

11. Lamb's view of Scotchmen (pp. 154-57). 

12. ''Night- fears" (pp. 178-84). 

13. "Dream-Children" (pp. 199-204). 

14. On chimney-sweeps (pp. 241-46). 

15. On beggars (pp. 252-55). 

16. The origin of roast pig (pp. 261-65). 

17. "Modern Gallantry" (pp. 281-83). 



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